The Caper
by Timeless A-Peel
Summary: Prequel to part 9 of the Arc. Gambit takes his leave. Emma gets back in the game.
1. The Proposition

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976.

Author's Note: The second of three stories, the first of which was "The Offer", that will ultimately feed into my next Arc story, albeit somewhat tangentially. This story can also be read as a standalone, though it started life as a few scenes of the aforementioned Arc story, but I had so much fun with it that it grew into its own separate, multi-chapter piece. Hopefully it'll make for some enjoyable summer reading.

For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

Mike Gambit heard the tumblers in his front door lock click into place with a certain amount of resignation. He pulled his sheet farther over his head in the faint hope that his visitor would take the hint and come back at a more humane time, when his head didn't feel like it was ready to explode. Sadly, the door swung open, and the footsteps that followed beat an unerring path straight for his bed, where they stopped. Gambit could sense their owner waiting expectantly for him to rouse.

After a moment with no further developments, Gambit sighed resignedly, and pushed back the sheet. "All right, Purdey, I'll take you to lunch if you promise to come back at a decent time—oh!" He was cut short when he caught sight of the woman staring down at him, whose face, while undeniably attractive, was definitely not the one he'd expected.

"That's very kind, but I've already eaten," the one-time Emma Peel said lightly. "Although you look as though a fatty breakfast and several cups of coffee wouldn't go amiss."

"You're not wrong." Gambit propped himself up on his elbows. "You know, I'm not opposed to beautiful women letting themselves into my flat, but I wish they'd do it when I wasn't half-asleep."

Emma raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to one side. "Does this happen often?"

"More often than you'd think."

"Perhaps more often that _you'd_ think." Emma sauntered over to inspect one of the illusionary pieces of art on the walls. "You ought to stop giving away keys. Or at the very least change your locks."

It was Gambit's turn to arch a brow. "I don't remember giving you a key."

"You didn't." Emma swung around with one of her trademark lopsided smiles in evidence. "I provided my own." Her hand emerged from one of the pockets of her fashionable long coat and brandished a lockpick.

Gambit clucked his tongue. "Naughty."

"That makes two of us," Emma quipped, strolling back over to the bedside, taking in Gambit's puzzled expression. "I was slightly concerned that my finding my way in might attract the wrong kind of attention. But your neighbours seem to find the sight of a woman breaking into your flat to be very unremarkable."

"Really?" Gambit smiled wickedly. "I can't imagine why."

Emma's lockpick rested lightly between her teeth as her gaze lightly danced over Gambit's bare chest. "It's definitely a mystery."

Gambit's eyes glinted wickedly. "Is there a reason you dropped by, or did you just want an excuse to practice your lock-picking skills?"

Emma's lopsided smile returned. "I do have a favour to ask. Are you free?"

"For you? Always." Gambit sat up. "There's not much on at the Ministry right now, and I have some leave stored up. But let's get going before Purdey finds you here and I have to explain!" He waited for Emma to offer to quit the room, but despite the fall of the sheet revealing that he had nothing on underneath the linen, Emma seemed disinclined to defer to his modesty. "Er," he began, as Emma regarded him coolly, "as I've told Purdey before, I'm not wearing any pyjamas."

Emma splayed a hand melodramatically across her forehead. "Oh, spare my blushes!" She made her way into the kitchen with graceful, elegant strides. "I'll make the coffee. You make yourself presentable."

Gambit realised that she wasn't going to leave, sighed and started gathering his sheet around him in a makeshift toga. "You're taking liberties this morning."

"I think the gentleman in question will survive," Emma said lightly, charm personified. Gambit grinned in spite of himself as he hurried his sheet-draped form toward the bathroom. Emma did what she liked and normally had little trouble in getting everyone else to follow suit, all without a hint of annoyance directed her way. No wonder Steed liked having her around, even if he'd probably fallen prey to her particular brand of charm just as often.

When Gambit re-emerged, showered and dressed, twenty minutes later, Emma was already sipping coffee and idly reading one of his books on probability. She nodded at a second cup and saucer steaming on the countertop next to a file. "That's why I interrupted your beauty sleep," she explained.

"Mmm." Gambit took a sip of his coffee and flipped open the file. "Looks like some sort of research into a new aeronautical component."

"It is," Emma confirmed, closing the book. "Only I have a theory."

Gambit grinned at her over the rim of his cup. "You always do."

Emma returned his smile in kind. "I think there's something they're not telling the government- something they're hiding from the authorities."

"And you want to find out what it is?" Gambit hypothesised.

Emma regarded him expectantly. "Did you clear your schedule?"

Gambit nodded. "I phoned in a day of leave."

"In that case, do you fancy a little corporate espionage?"

Gambit made a moue. "I'm a little more experienced in the brand where there's a foreign state on the other side."

"Then it'll be good practice. Expand your horizons," Emma declared, leaning forward to flick the file shut. "My car's outside."

vvv

Purdey whipped the last page of her report out of her typewriter triumphantly. She'd fallen behind on her reporting due to their heavy caseload in recent weeks, and the people in records were starting to fill her staff mailbox with tersely-worded memos 'kindly' asking her to catch up on her paperwork. She'd responded by smiling cheerily at them whenever she saw them, which only made them look more pinched. Purdey rather prided herself on keeping up with her duties, but bating the administrative staff, who seemed to look for opportunities to powertrip the agents at every turn, had turned it into something of a sport in the Ministry corridors. Gambit was particularly adept at getting under the skin of officialdom when it was hampering his ability to do his job. Purdey suspected they also liked to pick on him because he wasn't of the 'stock' normally allowed to wander the hallowed corridors of Whitehall, which only gave Gambit more reason to give them a hard time. Purdey suspected his 'two fingers to the establishment' attitude was starting to rub off on her. No wonder they were getting snippier with her. Not that she was going to back down.

Purdey stapled her typed pages together with the requisite forms and slipped them into a file. She rose from the desk she'd been occupying in the Ministry's mixed typing pool/workstation space, and weaved around the desks, out the door, and down the corridor to where she had to officially file her paperwork. There would be an inevitable snide comment when she did, she knew, but Purdey was known to be pretty cutting herself when the situation called for it. She allowed herself a private smile and picked up the pace. Nothing like a bit of verbal jousting before lunch.

"Purdey!"

It was Steed's voice, coming from over her shoulder. She stopped in the corridor and turned around, saw him striding toward her. "Hello, Steed," she greeted. "Is there something wrong?"

"Not at all," Steed assured, reaching her, "but if you could see your way to meeting Adams this afternoon, it'd be much appreciated. He's finishing up his report on that business last week, and he'd like to compare notes with you, since you found the body. I told him it shouldn't pose a problem."

Purdey shook her head. "No, that's fine. I've just finished the last of this paperwork, and then I'm off to the target range with some of the others. But my afternoon is free."

"Excellent," Steed enthused. "I'll tell him you'll see him at 2, shall I?"

"That's fine," Purdey confirmed, then crinkled her forehead slightly. "Have you seen Gambit? I was going to ask him if he wanted to join us at the target range. He usually has some new toy he wants to try."

Steed snapped his fingers. "Ah, I knew there was something else. Gambit called, said he was taking the day off."

Purdey's frown deepened. "A day off? Gambit never takes time off. What for?"

"He said he needed to catch up on some things. And we have been quite busy lately."

Purdey snorted. "You make it sound as though he's doing his taxes."

Steed chuckled. "Perhaps he is."

"Steed." Purdey levelled her gaze at him. "It's very sudden. Doesn't that worry you?"

"To be perfectly honest, it'd worry me more if he never took any time off at all. I've been telling Gambit he ought to take some leave for some time now. It keeps the mind sharp and gives the body a rest. I'm pleased he's finally taken my advice."

"And Gambit taking someone's advice doesn't worry you?" Purdey pressed.

Steed laughed at the remark, but still seemed unfazed. "He is entitled to a life outside of the job, Purdey," he reminded. "You can ask him what he was up to when you see him tomorrow, if you like. Not that he's under any obligation to answer. But regardless of what he gets up to, he's only away for one day. Even if something were wrong, how much trouble could he get into?"

Purdey pursed her lips into a thin line. "I have an idea."


	2. The Corporate Visit

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

"I can't believe you're still driving this old Lotus," Gambit said incredulously, looking up from the file Emma had given him to admire the car's interior.

"Only on very special occasions," Emma clarified, flicking the wheel with a deft expertise that the ex-racing driver in Gambit appreciated. "It puts me in the right mood."

"Seems ironic. Steed finally starts driving a car from this decade, and you get sentimental about old rides." Gambit looked meaningfully at Emma out of the corner of his eye, but she steadfastly refused to take the bait, so he carried on. "This company we're looking into, Klizan Aerotech. Are they in competition with Knight Industries?"

"Not directly," Emma clarified, taking a corner at speed, but with complete control. "But we attend many of the same conferences. One of their employees approached me with some very vague, but very worrying, concerns about some of their latest innovations. He believes that if they're allowed to go forward unchecked, it could put the public at risk." She changed gear. "I want to see what they're up to for myself, and if they are putting the public at risk, I'm going to put a stop to it. And then let the powers-that-be know what they're dealing with."

"By using my connections as a servant of Her Majesty's government," Gambit finished knowingly. "Because if you report it yourself, you'll be accused of corporate espionage, and everyone will assume you're out to inflate your own profit margins by outing the competition."

"Intelligence is a very attractive quality in a man," Emma said lightly, deftly sidestepping the requirement to confirm or deny. "I hope Purdey appreciates that."

Gambit let that lie, just as Emma had his Steed comment a moment earlier. _Quid pro quo_. "It never goes away, does it?" he murmured. "Even when you leave the service, you're always on the lookout for some wrong to put to rights."

Emma's mouth quirked up on one side in her signature lopsided smile. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"Who said disappoint?" Gambit replied with a grin.

vvv

For Purdey, the rest of the morning passed at a snail's pace. The target range proved a thoroughly inadequate means of distraction, and Purdey endured much ribbing at the hands of her colleagues when her aim proved to be off and her concentration frayed. Not that she hadn't wiped the smiles off their faces a moment later, when she'd torn the heart of her paper target to shreds. But she didn't take any pleasure in it, or in the offers to buy her lunch once they'd finished. She had more important things to do on her lunch hour, not that she was going to let anyone at the Ministry know what they were. Including Steed.

The drive to Gambit's flat from the Ministry was mercifully short, short enough that Purdey could make it there and back with time to spare. Not that she would have delayed her plan if she couldn't. She was going to Gambit's flat one way or another, and she wasn't waiting until the end of the work day to do it. No one would miss her. If anyone asked, she'd just say she'd spent her time in records. That was always Gambit's go-to hiding place. Except today, it seemed. She'd checked before she left, just to be sure he wasn't hanging about. It would be just like Gambit to pretend that he was on leave and then turn up at work surreptitiously, hidden away in some nook or cranny that only he knew about. Well, whatever he was up to, she was going to get to the bottom of it. As long as she made her meeting with Adams, everything else could take a flying leap.

She pulled up to the curb outside Gambit's flat, and immediately spotted the Jaguar XJS and Range Rover parked neatly in front of the building in their usual spots. That meant Gambit was home, more often than not. He wasn't the sort to take public transport, and she couldn't think of a good reason why he'd need to take a cab. Not that good reasons were all that were flitting through her mind as explanations for his sudden absence. He did walk sometimes, to the grocers' and things, but she had no way of tracing that, even if she wanted to. She would have to start with the flat and go from there.

It was only once she'd arrived at his flat door that it occurred to her that his sudden 'catch-up' might be with a woman. And the last thing Purdey wanted to do was walk in on Gambit mid-assignation, for all sorts of complicated reasons that went beyond prudishness and basic decency which Purdey didn't particularly want to dwell on at that moment. She'd never known Gambit to take time off for a woman before—usually he had to fit them into his schedule, not the other way around. But suppose this woman was special? The thought made her stomach flip-flop uncomfortably, her mind threatening to go down paths she wanted to avoid. She pressed Gambit's buzzer to waylay them, then pounded on his door for good measure, hoping the noise would shake the thoughts from her head.

All the commotion surely would have roused anyone inside the flat—it certainly brought one or two of Gambit's neighbours to their doors to peer at yet another woman in the seemingly-endless parade who were forever traipsing into the man's flat at all hours—but Purdey herself was met with silence. She kept an ear open as she dug in her purse for her spare key-for hurried footsteps, whispered missives, or even the rustle of bedclothes. Despite the singular lack of any signs of life, she inserted the key in the lock with a certain amount of trepidation. She was fairly certain that there was no one home by now, but she still braced herself for an uncomfortable scene when she swung the door open nonetheless, eyes squeezed shut to prevent any images from being permanently burnt onto her retinas.

The door knocked gently against the wall as it swung open, but that was the only sound that met her ears. There were no squeaks of alarm from a startled female, no cry of outrage from Gambit, no creak of a mattress. Purdey opened one eye and was met with an empty flat. She wasn't certain if she was relieved or concerned.

Purdey closed the door and returned her key to her purse. "Gambit?" she called, more out of courtesy than anything else. She wasn't really expecting a reply at this stage. She was fairly certain the flat was deserted.

A quick search of the bathroom confirmed that Gambit had been up and about that morning. The towel and toothbrush were both damp to the touch, and the faint scent of his shaving cream hung in the air. Purdey returned to the living area and noted the neatly made bed that had been retracted back into a couch. She took a walk through the kitchen, noting the dregs in the coffee pot and the damp dishcloth. She sauntered past the dishes drying in the rack with hardly a second thought, but some sixth sense gave her pause, led her to double back and regard it with a critical eye. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about it. Just an ordinary small clutch of dishes, the type that would normally see use in the morning. A plate. Knife and fork. Cup and saucer. And…another cup and saucer. Purdey plucked one of the black cups out of the draining rack and regarded it with pursed lips. "There was someone else here," she murmured, almost accusatorily. Someone Gambit was friendly with, if they'd joined him for a cup of coffee, though not breakfast, if the lack of a second set of dishes was any indication. She picked up the other cup and examined both, but if one of them had once borne traces of lipstick, it had been washed away by either Gambit or his mysterious visitor. Purdey returned both cups to the rack and crossed her arms almost defensively. All signs pointed to Gambit having left his flat willingly, with no suspicious actions on the part of his visitor. Steed would have probably noticed if his phone call sounded odd, anyway. But that still didn't quite explain why both of his cars were still outside. Of course, it did, objectively, Purdey knew. He'd obviously hitched a ride with his visitor. But Gambit usually preferred to be in the driver's seat, unless he was with people he trusted. That usually meant Steed or Purdey herself. So who was Gambit driving with today? Who was close enough to the man to engender that level of trust? There was something going on, Purdey knew. Something that went beyond Gambit taking a day off. And yet, there was no hint as to who Gambit's visitor was, or where he had gone. The flat was almost too anonymously neat. Purdey was forced to admit that she had no leads and no way to work out where Gambit was or what he was doing, other than to wait until the next morning, when he'd come into work and she could interrogate him herself.

If he came back.

Purdey shook her head and tried not to think that way. Of course Gambit would come back. He'd only called in one day's leave, after all. He hadn't indicated that he'd do anything drastic, anything that might take him away from his life permanently. The Ministry, his flat, his friends.

Her.

Purdey rested her hand on the counter of Gambit's bar as though she could intuit where he was by touching this surface he'd so recently touched, as if she could open up a psychic channel between them, tap into that unspoken affinity and synchronicity that was the foundation of their partnership. All she needed from him was a sign, a confirmation that, come what may, all would be right tomorrow, and life would continue apace.

Finally accepting that there was nothing more to be gained at the flat, and with her lunch hour rapidly slipping away, Purdey sighed and made her way through the plush carpet to Gambit's front door. She opened it, and cast one last look at the empty interior. "You had better be back here tomorrow, Mike Gambit," she ordered the room, an echo chamber that she hoped had a direct channel to Gambit. "Or so help me, I'll never forgive you."

With that, she closed the door, her words still resonating amongst the lonely walls.

Vvv

"Are you all right?" Emma asked Gambit with undisguised concern as they ascended the steps in front of the building that housed Knight Industries. "You look as though someone just walked over your grave."

"Hmm?" The distinctive pair of lines between Gambit's eyes that denoted worry were in evidence when he turned toward Emma, expression distant. "What was that?"

Emma wrinkled her mouth. "You were miles away. If you're not comfortable with this, all you have to do is say so. I'm a reasonable woman."

Gambit grinned. "Don't I know it. No, I'm okay. Just had a bit of a feeling, that's all."

Emma arched an eyebrow. "A message from the great beyond?"

"Something like that."

"Mmm. Well, don't beam up just yet. We have things to do."

"Aye, aye, ma'am."

They pushed through the sleek glass doors at the front of the building, and Emma showed her ID to the man at the door before stepping into the lift with Gambit. She pushed a button and the doors slid closed, much more smoothly than the ones at the Ministry Gambit couldn't help but notice. Emma's operation was effortlessly modern, and backed by the money to make it so.

"Shouldn't I have an ID or something?" he asked Emma as the lift ascended. "If I'm going to keep coming here?"

Emma's mouth quirked up on one side. "Keep coming here? You've only been here a handful of times. I imagine you'll want a corner office next."

"I've probably been here more times than some of your board members," Gambit quipped, tongue in cheek. "Anyway, you're the one who keeps asking me over. Or am I just here to burnish your image and keep the rumour mill happy?"

"Wishful thinking," Emma declared, just as the lift dinged and the doors slid open.

"I know how office rumours start," Gambit said coyly.

"Yes. Because you start them," Emma said lightly, stepping out of the box and forcing Gambit to follow before the doors closed on him.

"At least it's good for office morale," Gambit argued with a smile, meeting Emma stride for stride. "Keeps people entertained."

"Or distracted," Emma said knowingly, nodding at some of her employees as they passed them in the corridor, going in the opposite direction. They nodded back at her, but the eyes of the women, at least, were definitely on Gambit. "And you, Mike, are definitely a distraction."

"Sorry," Gambit replied, not looking the least bit repentant, Emma noted.

"You're not," she declared, opening the door to her office and leaving Gambit to close it behind them.

When he turned around, Gambit noted that there was a woman standing impatiently near Emma's desk, cradling a bundle of files, and perusing the top one with keen interest. "Good morning, Nicki," Emma greeted, causing the woman to look up from her file. She was clad in a soft pink dress with a fitted waist that complimented the warm brown of her hair, and matching sky-high heels. Her hair was arranged in an elaborate updo, and her lovely face slid easily between determination and warmth.

"Good morning, Emma," she greeted, hefting the files expectantly. "I was beginning to worry you wouldn't be in today."

"Sorry, I know I should have called," Emma apologised. "But I came to a decision on the Klizan Aerotech issue this morning, and I thought I ought to strike while the iron was hot."

Nicki's face lit up instantly. "Are we going to do something about it? Because I've been resisting the urge to pick up the phone and ring the authorities myself all morning."

"Then it's just as well you didn't," Emma said with a smile, nodding at Gambit, who was standing patiently in front of her desk, hands behind his back, waiting to be introduced. "I've enlisted help." She gestured to Gambit, then back to Nicki. "Nicki, this is Mike Gambit. He's associated with my previous, unofficial employer. Mike, this is Nicki. She's my righthand, in charge of most everything when I'm not here, although even when I am on the premises, I suspect I'm redundant."

"Oh, don't listen to her," Nicki scoffed, reaching out to take Gambit's extended hand. "This woman knows this company down to the bulbs in the lamps and the tiles on the floor. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gambit."

"The pleasure's all mine, Nicki," Gambit said, and meant it. "And please, call me Mike."

"That and more besides," Nicki said with a saucy wink, but Gambit was distracted even as he was grinning back by Emma mouthing "distraction" at him over Nicki's shoulder. He ignored her and turned back to Nicki.

"Nicki, Nicki." Gambit rolled the name around in his mouth. "Not the selfsame Nicki who was caught up with that dance school back in the sixties? The one killing off its pupils and swapping them for spies?"

Nicki leaned back, impressed. "As a matter of fact, I am. How did you know?"

Gambit winked. "I spend a lot of time in the files. Emma's cases make for good reading."

"Oh, I like him," Nicki said to Emma, with a certain amount of glee. "First Mr. Steed, now you. Are they all like you at your department?"

"Steed?" Gambit arched an eyebrow at Emma. "Something you're not telling me?"

"She met him at the dance school," Emma said briskly. "Nicki, do we still have the invitation for Klizan Aerotech's gala night?"

"Yes," Nicki confirmed, setting her file-shaped burden on Emma's desk. "Does this mean you're going?"

"It does, only I'm going to need a plus one." She nodded meaningfully at Gambit. "Could you sort out some sort of official position for him in the company? Preferably under a fake name, and as quietly as possible."

"Like a ghost." Nicki jerked her head toward Gambit, indicating that he should follow her. "Come along, file boy. Emma can manage without you for a moment."

"I have thus far," Emma said wryly, lifting her telephone from its receiver as the pair exited her office.

"So, you've been roped into helping Emma investifate Klizan?" Nicki inquired, leading the way down the hall to an anonymous-looking door next to the lifts. "I knew she had connections with the intelligence services, but I thought she was finished with all of that."

"She is," Gambit confirmed, then waggled his eyebrows wickedly at her. "Officially."

"Oh, not this again." Nicki sounded unimpressed, then elaborated at Gambit's bemused expression. "I know, she wasn't an official employee. But I suppose you are."

Gambit grinned. "I can show you my ID," he offered.

"And much more besides, I'm sure," Nicki retorted, looking him up and down without bothering to disguise it. "But I have an ID of my own." She brandished a card and passed it over a scanner by the door, which unlocked the door with a mechanical click. "In here."

Gambit tsked. "In there? All alone? How do I know you won't take advantage of me?"

Nicki leaned in close. "That's a risk you'll have to take. _Mike_."

"Well, I do work in a dangerous profession," Gambit replied. "Risks are my stock and trade."

"Promises, promises." Nicki swept into the room ahead of him, dress fluttering behind her not unlike Purdey's did, but not exactly alike. Still, the woman moved without dancer's grace—maybe that was what made Purdey flit into his mind. Not that Purdey was ever really far from his mind. Not really. Gambit wondered what she was doing at that moment…

The room contained a few filing cabinets, and a solitary computer terminal. "Make sure the door closes behind you," Nicki instructed, seemingly concerned about security despite the inauspicious surroundings. "This terminal has master access to the entire company. Only a handful of people are allowed to use it," she explained, as Gambit obeyed.

"Ah," Gambit said with dawning realisation, making sure the door clicked shut behind him before moving to where Nicki stood tapping on the keyboard. "This is how you ungainfully employ me at Knight."

"You catch on quickly," Nicki said distractedly, already entering queries. "Now then, what sort of cover story will work best for you?" She squinted at Gambit, as though sizing him up for potential employment. "It'll have to be something anonymous, something not too high up on the foodchain, but important enough that it won't seem strange that you've been invited along to an evening out with the boss." She chewed her lip in thought. "How about a senior accountant?"

"Well, I am good with figures," Gambit volunteered, grinning at his own joke.

"Somehow I'm not surprised," Nicki opined wryly. "What about a name? In case the Klizan Aerotech people know their spies."

"Try Michael O'Carroll," Gambit suggested, with a private smile of his own. "Bit of a family in-joke."

"I won't ask," Nick said with a shake of her head, tapping the information into the system while Gambit looked over her shoulder.

"Two 'Ls' in O'Carroll," he advised. "What kind of event is this, anyway?"

"Your standard black-tie affair," Nicki informed, scrolling through a series of screens with an ease that revealed her comfort with the system. "Dancing, drinks, finger-food, and lots of milling about with the great and the good, all congratulating one another on how successful they are, and how much more successful they can make one another if they combine forces." Nicki's lack of enthusiasm for the event was evident in her tone. "Emma was on the fence about whether to go or not, but it's the perfect way to gain entry into their building, if you can find an opportunity to slip away."

"You let us worry about that," Gambit told her, already absorbing the information Nicki had entered into the system and committing it to memory. "Accountant, accountant. I'll have to dig out my serious glasses. No one questions your cover when you're wearing glasses."

Nicki grinned at him over her shoulder. "Is that your expert opinion?"

"Voice of experience." Gambit grinned back.

"Yes, well," Nicki began, hitting a key and nodding in satisfaction as the printer behind the terminal screeched to life, "my voice of experience is asking a very different question-" She turned and sized Gambit up with an expert's eye, although Gambit wasn't entirely certain what kind of expert until the next few words left her mouth. "—which is, can you dance, Mike?"

Gambit's grin broadened. "I could tell you a long story about my history with dancing…"

"And the short version is?"

"Yes."

Nicki's eyes narrowed a little. "Expert, intermediate, or beginner?"

"Expert," Gambit replied cheekily, with just a touch of swagger.

Nicki arched an eyebrow. "Oh yes? We'll see about that." She stepped forward and took his hand, put the other on his shoulder. "Come on, then, Michael O'Carroll. Impress me."

Gambit was still grinning. "Now?"

"May as well. That printer takes an age to warm-up."

"Good thing I don't." Gambit glanced down at her towering footwear. "Are you sure you're willing to risk it in those shoes?"

Nicki flashed him a smile that was more akin to a baring of teeth. "I was a dance instructress before I started working here, if you'll recall from all that extracurricular reading you supposedly did."

"I know. Sounds like you paid your dues in blood. I thought you'd have given your arches the rest of your lifetime off after that."

"Believe me," Nicki said wryly, "after that job, sitting behind a desk in heels all day is heaven. My arches are in fine fettle. So come on. Emma will look very strange at the party if she needs to take a turn on the floor and you can't keep up, especially when it's the one time we don't want her to attract too much attention. Let's go." Her eyes flashed cockily. "Unless, of course, you're stalling."

Gambit feigned outrage. "Me? Never."

"Do you want to count us in, or should I?"

"You're the dance instructress."

"Deference to authority. I like it."

"Only when I approve of the source."

"I'll bear that in mind. Ready? One, two, three…"

They pushed off smoothly, and were soon whirling their way around the room with ease, dodging the filing cabinets as they went. Nicki, in spite of herself, was impressed. Gambit detected her surprise and grinned. "Do I pass?"

"Well, I wish more of my pupils were like you," Nicki confessed. "It would have saved my poor abused feet a lot of pain and suffering. Where did you learn?"

"Lots of practical experience with partners who knew what they were doing," Gambit told her, effortlessly changing direction when they got a little too close to the computer terminal. "And lots of practice. Although I don't do much ballroom these days. It doesn't really work down the disco."

"All the same, you must dance fairly often," Nicki assessed, the instructress in her surfacing instinctively. "You haven't missed a step."

"My partner—the woman I work with," Gambit told her, holding back Purdey's name, despite its seemingly autonomous desire to push its way out of his lips. "She used to be a dancer. Royal Ballet."

"Wow!" Nicki exclaimed, genuinely starstruck. "That's impressive."

"Yeah. Keeps me on my toes."

"In most ways, I imagine," Nicki said dryly.

"You could say that."

"Well, she's clearly doing a good job, even if it doesn't normally do to praise the competition."

Gambit quirked an interested eyebrow. "Competition?"

"Here we are." Nicki spun out of his grasp without missing a beat and started pulling the paper out of the printer. "Michael O'Carroll, senior accountant and money manager. Welcome to Knight Industries."

"Pleasure," Gambit murmured, taking the page from her and looking it over with approval. "What now?"

"Now," Nicki began, pulling the paper from his grasp, "I go down to Klizan Aerotech and put Emma's plus one on the guest list."

"Do you think you'll manage it?" Gambit wanted to know.

Nicki leaned in very, very close, lips almost touching Gambit's. "I can be very persuasive," she said softly, but not without conviction.

"Yes, I'm sure you can," Gambit murmured, eyes flicking down to her lips, then back up to her eyes. "And what about me?"

"Back to Emma," Nicki instructed. "I'm sure she must be missing you by now."

vvv

Emma was waiting for Gambit, as it happened, with her arms crossed and an ironic look in her eye. "I'm not going to ask why Nicki came out of the terminal room looking slightly flushed and out of breath," she said dryly, gaze unreadable.

"It was perfectly innocent," Gambit defended, with a smile that wasn't innocent at all. "She wanted me to demonstrate my technique."

"That's what I was afraid of."

"My dancing technique."

"That's only moderately better. Are you through seducing my top employee, or would you like me to call back later?"

"How do you know it wasn't the other way around?" Gambit protested mildly.

Emma put her head to one side and considered. "I don't deny that Nicki isn't entirely innocent, but I know you aren't, either."

"You brought me here," Gambit pointed out, spreading his hands apologetically. "I can't help the reactions I elicit."

"Yes, your charm is a very real liability," Emma said ironically, sauntering over to him and tapping him on the nose with a piece of card.

Gambit plucked it from her fingers. "What's this?"

"My invitation to the gala tonight. Nicki was able to tell you about it in between assessing your foxtrot?"

"Just about. She's off to get me on the guest list," Gambit confirmed. "What's the play? Walk in the front door, then slip out the back when no one's looking?"

"That's right," Emma confirmed, taking the card back. "We need to get upstairs and into their files. That's where we'll find the evidence I need to confirm my theory."

"We'll need gear," Gambit pointed out. "If they check us at the door, they're bound to think a lockpicking kit is a strange accessory for a night out. Even for you."

"Nicki's going to take care of that as well," Emma informed. "She'll leave us a bag somewhere where we can pick it up later." She looked Gambit up and down. "If you need to add anything to it, you'll have to let her know soon. Provided you can do it without breaking into a spontaneous tango."

"I'll do my best to turn off the charm."

"I don't believe you for a moment, but do hurry up."


	3. The Break-In

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

Emma flipped down the visor on the driver's side of the Lotus and checked her hair. "Ready?"

"Just about." Gambit reached into the breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket and retrieved a thin, insubstantial object. Emma turned inquisitive eyes on him.

"What do you have there?"

"Just another layer of disguise," Gambit said mysteriously as he unfolded the object. "One that I think you'll appreciate."

"What do you—ah!" Emma's puzzled frown dissolved into gales of laughter as Gambit slid a pair of thick-rimmed glasses onto his face. "The serious, no-nonsense glasses. Guaranteed to instantly turn the wearer into an unremarkable drudge, completely above suspicion. I'd almost forgotten about those."

"They're an espionage classic," Gambit said with relish, pushing them up his nose with a flourish. "I seem to remember you used them quite a few times in your day."

"I did," Emma confirmed, wiping away a tear of mirth with great care to preserve the integrity of her mascara. "But I'm sure they didn't look half as fetching on me as they do on you."

"I don't believe that for a second," Gambit said, adjusting the rims with exaggerated care. "Think I'll pass muster as the man who does your books?"

"I'm more worried they'll think you're doing something else of mine," Emma quipped, opening her car door. "Come on. It wouldn't do to keep Klizan's people waiting."

"Not to mention his files," Gambit added knowingly, following Emma out into the night.

"Ah, Ms. Knight," Klizan, a tall, angular-featured man, greeted Emma as they filed into a large room already full of burbling voices. "Delighted to see you this evening. I'd been given to understand that you might not be able to attend. But then you requested a second invitation." He looked appraisingly at Gambit. "I understand completely that some people would not want to attend an event unescorted."

"Yes," Gambit asserted, sensing Emma's hackles rise at the comment. "I get terribly lonely if I go out on my own. Luckily, Ms. Knight was kind enough to ask me along tonight."

Emma's mouth quirked up on one side at Gambit's return of Klizan's patronising tone in kind. "I'm a firm believer in keeping the morale of my employees high," she said briskly. "Mr. Klizan, I'd like you to meet Michael O'Carroll, from our financial department."

"Ah." Klizan took Gambit's hand and shook it. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. O'Carroll."

"Likewise," Gambit replied, smiling a little too broadly, squeezing the man's hand a little too hard.

"Keeping an eye on your company's finances around the clock," Kilizan went on, a little desperately, as he tried to extricate his hand from Gambit's solid grip. "I admire your dedication."

"Oh, I'm very dedicated," Gambit confirmed, releasing the man's hand a fraction of a second after the handshake had obviously gone on a fraction too long. "Ms. Knight, can I get you a drink?"

"Thank you, Mr. O'Carroll," Emma replied with a smile, and Gambit bowed slightly before taking his leave.

Klizan watched him go. "A very…interesting man," he said carefully, watching Gambit's retreating back with a mixture of apprehension and bemusement. "How long has he been with your company?"

"A little while," Emma replied airily, smile never leaving her face. "As he's so fond of reminding me, he's very good with figures."

"Ah," Klizan said thoughtfully, rubbing his hand. "I'm sure."

Emma noticed the gesture and tsked. "All that lugging about of ledgers and tapping away at calculators does wonders for the hand muscles. He doesn't know his own strength," she explained with feigned concern. "Do excuse me. I think he has my drink."

"Well?" Gambit inquired, handing Emma a glass of champagne as she arrived at his side. "Is he suspicious of me yet?"

"Yes," Emma pronounced, daintily sipping her champagne. "For all the wrong reasons."

Gambit snagged a glass for himself off the tray of a passing waiter. "It's all going to plan then."

Emma slanted an ironic eyebrow at him over the rim of her glass. "I suspect he thinks I make a habit of seducing my employees."

"Probably." Gambit flashed her a lightning quick grin. "Like I said, it's going to plan. We knew he was going to think you wangling me an invite was weird. Would you rather he got it right and worked out why we're really here?"

"No." Emma's mouth was twitching between a wry smile and pursed lips, and didn't seem to be able to decide which way to go. "But I do have to live with this reputation."

"Hey, you called me," Gambit reminded. "And there are only so many ways to explain this whole thing away." He tilted his head and regarded her frankly from behind his glasses. "Unless you're embarrassed to be seen with me?"

"Not in the least," Emma said lightly, letting the champagne bubbles dissolve on her tongue. "I'm on edge, that's all."

"Well, we can work that off," Gambit offered, reaching out to take her glass. He was met with Emma's incredulous expression. "Dancing. Until we can make our move and get out of here."

Emma laughed. "I should have known." She took the hand Gambit offered. "Lead on, Mr. O'Carroll."

"My pleasure, Ms. Knight."

They positioned themselves somewhere Klizan was sure to see them, but not so obviously front and centre that it would be clear that they wanted to be seen. "You look beautiful, by the way," Gambit murmured, when they'd fallen into an easy rhythm, allowing himself another look at Emma's long black evening gown, plain but elegant, with a fitted bodice, square-cut neckline, and thin straps dissolving into an elegantly-draping skirt. She'd foregone jewellery, but put her hair up in a simple twist.

"Thank you," Emma said graciously, adjusting her grip on the well-tailored shoulder of Gambit's tuxedo jacket. "You're quite pretty yourself."

Gambit leaned in and whispered in her ear, "It's the glasses. Give me an air of mystery."

Emma laughed lightly. "The rest of the package doesn't hurt, either," she whispered back, lips brushing his earlobe.

Gambit's eyebrows climbed over the top of his glasses. "Are you making a pass, or trying to chew my earlobe off?"

"Let's just say I'm warming to the role," Emma replied saucily, treating Gambit to subtle wink. "I'm rather enjoying having my hands on a younger man."

"I'm only a few years younger than you."

"It still counts," Emma asserted, with a giggle.

"Did you start drinking before you picked me up? Should I worry about you getting handsy?"

"Always."

"Were you always this giddy on assignment, or am I bringing out some new, mad side of you that you've kept hidden all these years?"

"I'm putting on a show for Mr. Klizan and enjoying myself in the process," Emma informed, still close to Gambit's ear. "And I think it's working."

Gambit buried his nose in Emma's hair. "Do you think it's time to make ourselves scarce?"

"After this dance," Emma decided, caught up in the swirl of the music. "It'll be less obvious. And it would be a shame to cut this song short."

Gambit chuckled. "As you wish, my lady."

vvv

"Nicki said she stowed the bag in a janitor's closet down here," Emma said softly, moving soundlessly across the floor with Gambit in tow.

"I want to know how she got down here at all," Gambit marvelled. "We walked in with an invitation and I'm still amazed we managed to slip out of the ballroom without Klizan catching us. This place is full to bursting with security."

"Her talents aren't limited to business," Emma said simply. "She's very resourceful."

"You're not joking," Gambit murmured, glancing over his shoulder to make sure they weren't being followed. "How much farther?"

"I think this is it." Emma carefully turned the knob of an anonymous-looking door and slipped inside, with Gambit pressing in behind her.

Emma pulled the string of the naked lightbulb hanging over their heads, casting pale yellow light over their evening wear. "It should be here, somewhere," she murmured, digging around near the back of the room in among the janitorial supplies.

"If it's not, all the handsiness in the world isn't going to make up for the broken locks we're going to leave behind," Gambit pointed out, untying his bowtie and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.

"Patience," Emma urged, still rummaging around. "Aha! Here it is." She hefted a small leather bag from within an industrial-sixed wash bucket and set it on the floor between them.

"I didn't doubt you for a minute," Gambit said with obvious relief, shrugging off his tuxedo jacket.

"I should hope not," Emma retorted, sliding the straps of her dress off her shoulders.

Gambit regarded the gesture with a mixture of interest and incredulity. "Do you want me to turn around?"

"I think you'll find I've spared your blushes," Emma said wryly, shimmying out of the dress to reveal a thin-strapped undergarment on top, her waist and legs clad in a catsuit, the top of which had been left hanging, disguised by the volume of her skirt.

"That's what I call a quick change," Gambit quipped, pulling the fake tuxedo panel from the front of his shirt to reveal an ordinary shirt hidden beneath the dressy exterior.

"I could say the same," Emma retorted as Gambit balled up his jacket and panel and stowed both in the bag, before pulling out a leather jacket.

"Let's hope it was quick enough," Gambit murmured, pulling the bowtie from around his neck and adding it to the bag. "How long do you think we have before Klizan sends out a search party?"

Emma looked heavenwards in thought. "About half an hour," she estimated, sliding her arms into the sleeves of her catsuit and pulling the two halves of the garment tight across her chest. "It depends on how paranoid he's feeling this evening." She zipped the catsuit up in one fluid motion. "And how long some of his guests delay him over the punch."

Gambit grinned at her. "Loquacious, are they?"

"Irrepressible." Emma pulled the clip from her hair, letting her long auburn locks fall loose around her shoulders, and shaking them out for good measure. "Are you ready?"

Gambit hefted the bag. "When you are."

"Good." Emma stepped in close and removed the glasses that Gambit had forgotten to take off in all the excitement, tucked them away in the bag. "I'm in the mood for a break-in."

vvv

It wasn't far to the lifts from the closet, but with guards patrolling the corridors away from the party, the distance seemed farther than it was. Emma and Gambit darted silently down hallways, taking the long way to their destination, all for the advantage of remaining unseen. They were almost caught several times, but they managed to elude their would-be captors. But despite the near-misses, nothing felt as fraught or as interminably long as the wait for the lifts.

"Come on, come on," Gambit muttered under this breath, jabbing the button impatiently. He knew it wouldn't make it arrive any faster, but it at least gave him something to do. He turned to Emma, who was keeping an eye on the corridor. "Are you sure we can't take the stairs?"

"The stairs are alarmed," Emma murmured back, eyes never moving from the corridor. "The lift won't take us to the upper floors, but the odds are better that we can find our way around that. It'll be faster, too. The doors in the stairway would take too long to pick."

"That's a matter of opinion," Gambit muttered, looking up at the indicator. The lift seemed to be moving as slow as the proverbial molasses in January.

"Patience," Emma advised.

"Tell that to the guards that when they catch—" Gambit was cut off as the lift dinged merrily, and the doors slid open. Emma straightened up and stepped inside, then turned to treat Gambit to a cheeky smile.

"I did tell you," she teased, not the least bit repentantly.

"Mmm," Gambit grumbled, stepping in beside her and hitting the button for the highest floor they could reach without a key card. The lift sailed smoothly upward. Emma watched the light on the floor indicator panel ascend, hand poised over the "emergency stop" button. Moments before the lift doors were due to open on their floor, she pounded it, and the lift shuddered to a halt.

"Come on," she hissed. Gambit, without prompting, made a stirrup with his hands, and Emma leapt nimbly into them, straining for the lever that would open the panel in the lift's ceiling. The panel popped open, and Gambit boosted Emma higher, without missing a beat. Emma's shapely legs disappeared into the opening, replaced by her head and shoulders. "Bag," she prompted. Gambit tossed the satchel up to her, before jumping up and snagging the edge of the opening himself. Emma caught his arm, and helped him manoeuvre up through the small space. "Right," Emma whispered, rummaging in the bag as Gambit carefully closed the panel behind them. She came up with a torch and a small tool, shone the former onto the wall of the lift shaft. "There's the ladder. And we—" She panned the light all the way up the length of the shaft. "—are going straight to the top."

"Naturally," Gambit quipped, Emma's light catching his saucy grin. He slung the bag over his shoulders. "I'll put that in my belt," he offered, nodding to the tool in her hand. "You light the way. Ladies first, and all that."

"Thank you, kind sir." Emma handed the tool to Gambit, who tucked it into his belt.

"Well, it is your op," Gambit reminded, following Emma across the roof of the lift to the ladder. "Just promise me one thing."

Emma gripped the first run of the ladder. "What's that?"

"Shout if you see anything start moving. I don't want to be any thinner than I already am."

Emma grinned. "Deal."

vvv

They made the show climb up the lift shaft without incident, and prised open the doors that would have opened upon the arrival of the now-absent lift had they been in a position to use it, using the tool Gambit had stowed in his belt. Which was why they now found themselves outside a locked room that Emma had assured Gambit contained the records for Klizan Aerotech's current projects.

Gambit looked up from picking the lock and grimaced when he took the torch beam straight in the eyes. "Careful where you point that thing!" he hissed.

"Sorry," Emma apologised, readjusting the angle of the beam of light so it settled squarely on the door's lock. "How much longer do you think it'll take?"

"It's a hefty lock," Gambit said grimly, returning to his work. "Usually I just kick the door in, if I can."

"I suspect that would defeat the purpose of breaking in under the cover of night," Emma replied, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Gambit chanced a look away from his work to survey Emma, leaning against the wall with one knee bent to press the bottom of her foot flat against the wall behind her, resplendent in the figure-hugging black catsuit and matching gloves that she'd chosen specifically for their nighttime sojourn. "Not from where I'm standing."

Emma rewarded him with another flash of light to the eyes accompanied by a kittenish smile. "You're wasting time."

"Sorry," Gambit apologised, not looking particularly repentant. "But if you'd shown up at my flat wearing that, I might have gotten out of bed a little faster."

"If I'd shown up wearing leather, your neighbours would have you evicted by lunchtime," Emma said knowingly. "Which would have defeated the purpose of my being discreet in the first place. So be glad that I've disposed of the leather. Among other things, it's much too high-maintenance." She patted Gambit's leather jacket-clad shoulder reassuringly. "Besides, it looks much better on you."

"Thanks. You know, you can always help if you want this to go faster."

"I've already practised my lock-picking skills once today," Emma reminded. "And from the sounds of things, you could use some practice opening a door with something other than your foot."

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the lock clicked satisfyingly. Gambit looked triumphantly up at Emma. "You were saying?"

Emma panned the torch up as he rose to his feet. "You just proved my point."

Gambit sighed and pulled his own torch from his belt, flicked it on. "Let's go."

Emma swept a hand ahead of her. "Lead on."

Gambit crept into the office, feeling Emma close at his shoulder. Once they were both inside, he heard her close the door softly behind them. Gambit stood in the dark for a moment, then nearly jumped out of his skin when Emma whispered breathily in his ear, "I'll start over here." She moved away to one of the filing cabinets without waiting for a reply, and Gambit realised that he'd been waiting for the idiosyncratic rhythm of Purdey's heels on the tile, not Emma's soft booties, moving soundlessly behind him. He swallowed down the irrational feeling of guilt that the thought elicited, and made a beeline for the desk.

"You know," he said softly, as he started rifling through the files on the desktop, "if you needed help, you could have called Steed."

He could just see Emma's eyebrows rise in the light of her torch resting on top of the file cabinet. "If you don't enjoy the pleasure of my company, you should have said so."

"You know that's not true," Gambit countered, checking under the blotter. "But you know he'd drop everything to help you if you asked."

"Maybe," Emma allowed, pulling a drawer out of the cabinet with more force than was strictly necessary. "Steed and I have a lot of history." She paused then added. "Perhaps too much." She started flicking through the files and said briskly, "You didn't tell him you were helping me when you called in your leave, did you?"

"Of course not," Gambit replied, rifling through the contents of the desk's in- and out-trays.

"What about Purdey?" Emma wanted to know, voice heavy with meaning.

"You wanted me to keep this quiet. If I told Purdey, Purdey would tell Steed," Gambit pointed out testily, annoyed by the question without really understanding why, or why he was taking it out on Emma. _Liar_ , a little voice in his head sneered. _You know exactly why it bothers you. And so does Emma._

"Not if you asked her not to," Emma predicted, pulling out a file and skimming it with practised efficiency. "What harm could it do?"

"Fewer people who know what I'm up to, the better," Gambit countered, pulling out desk drawers and shifting the contents around moodily. "And anyway, she wouldn't understand."

Emma's silhouette canted sceptically. "She wouldn't understand that you're helping a friend?" Her voice dropped to that low, throaty pitch that he'd become delightedly accustomed to in the course of their friendship. "Or she wouldn't understand who you were friends with?"

Gambit made a noise that conveyed an array of emotions, all pointing to his reluctance to discuss this particular issue at all. "It's not a conversation we could have easily," he said finally, pulling out a three hole punch and rattling it around experimentally.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you sounded guilty," Emma said with perfectly pitched casualness. "You're very concerned about what Purdey thinks about you for someone you claim is only a friend."

Gambit's eyes glinted in the dark. "Is this your way of getting me to quit asking you about Steed?"

"You're not the only one who can play psychoanalyst."

"Only you're not playing." Emma had a raft of credentials and degrees as long as his arm, and Gambit knew better than to try to catch her out. For all he knew, she could have picked up a PhD in psychology in the intervening weeks. He rattled the three-hole punch again and frowned at the clank that came from within. "Emma."

Emma's head popped up from the files. "Found something?"

"Maybe." Gambit flipped the hole punch over and prised the back off as Emma joined him. Gambit narrowly avoided knocking his chin on the top of her head as she leaned forward. Emma was half an inch taller than Purdey, but went in for more practical footwear, and the height recalculations required for the new woman by his side were doing his head in in the dark of the office. "Either your executive prints all his reports on steel, or there's a key in here."

Emma snatched up the wastepaper basket to catch the makeshift confetti from the punch before it hit the floor. Her economy of movement reminded Gambit of a particularly lithe cat, all smooth gestures and effortless strides. It was grace, but a different kind of grace than Purdey's, whose practised ease and physical awareness were born of spending years onstage. It would be impossible to try to rate them against one other, but while Emma's physicality, as well as everything else about her, appealed to him, she didn't make his heart do the complicated little dance that Purdey did just by looking at him. He suddenly felt her absence with an almost physical ache. Even looking at Emma's lovely long auburn hair, a stark contrast to Purdey's blonde bob, hollowed out a cavern in his chest.

Something clanged loudly into the rubbish bin, in among the hole punch confetti. "Aha!" Emma exclaimed, thrusting the punch into Gambit's hands and bending to retrieve it. She came up with a small silver key, held it up triumphantly. "I know where this goes."

"Key to your heart?" Gambit quipped.

"Better." Emma strode purposefully over to one of the filing cabinets, knelt in front of the bottom drawer.

Gambit returned the backing to the hole punch and carefully placed it how he'd found it. "Key to someone else's heart?"

Emma unlocked the drawer and slid it out. "Those sort of things have to be offered. They're not for the taking."

"Yes, I know," Gambit sighed, negotiating his way carefully around the desk and peering over Emma's shoulder at the file she'd withdrawn from within the dark depths of the cabinet.

"Spoken like someone who lost his sometime ago," Emma observed as she straightened up.

"Takes one to know one," Gambit countered, and he didn't think he imagined Emma's grin in the dark.

"Hey!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I think this might be what we're looking for."

"The meaning of life?" Gambit queried.

"The other thing we're looking for," Emma said flatly. "If I'm reading this right—"

"And you always do."

"—then my source was right. There's something wrong with the new components being churned out at the factory." She looked over her shoulder at Gambit, met his eyes. "They're faulty, and they know it, but they've found a way to fudge the inspections."

"Well, then," Gambit began, taking the file from Emma and skimming the contents for himself. "Maybe we'll have to conduct some inspections of our own."

"And ensure there's no faulty product to be had."

"It's our duty."

"As civil-minded members of the public."

"With one or two contacts in the right places," Gambit finished with a grin. He handed her back the file. "Shall we go?"

Emma smiled back in the torchlight, brushed her hair back from her forehead in her idiosyncratic way. "Just as soon as we put this back where we found it."

"Good idea," Gambit agreed, as Emma bent and returned the file to the drawer, locked it, and straightened up, key in hand. "Where to next?" he wanted to know, taking the key and slipping it back in its hiding place. "The factory?"

Emma nodded and tugged her gloves more tightly onto her hands. "It isn't far. I'll show you where it is on the map when we get back to the car."

"Fine." Gambit was about to say something more when there was a sudden burble of voices out in the corridor. Emma spun around in surprise, while Gambit automatically ducked under cover of the desk, gun at ready.

"What happened?" Emma exclaimed, snatching up her torch and vaulting over the desk to join him.

"Someone must have noticed the lift was stuck a few floors down," Gambit murmured distractedly, peering over the desktop. "Security's investigating. We don't have much time."

"What's your usual escape route in these situations?" Emma wanted to know.

To her surprise, Gambit grinned. "Remember what I said about kicking down doors?"

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Yes."

"Well, I'm not against jumping out windows, either."

Emma shook her head in disbelief. "Kicking in doors and jumping out of windows. I'm surprised Steed lets you anywhere near his Limoges."

Gambit looked a bit sheepish. "It has been a source of debate."

"I'm not surprised." Emma cocked her head as footsteps sounded in the corridor. "But beggars can't be choosers. Shall we?"

Gambit waggled his eyebrows and sprung up, opened the window. "Ladies first."

Emma looked down at the car park several floors below. "From multiple stories up. How kind."

"There's a drainpipe over there." Gambit indicated alone the ledge. "If you're fond of your knees."

"I would appreciate maintaining the use of both of my knees at least until I'm forty," Emma said wryly. "What about you?"

"I think I'm out of time," Gambit said grimly, as the office door started to rattle alarmingly. He flashed Emma a cocky grin. "You take the drainpipe."

Emma climbed onto the window ledge and started shuffling along the edge. "What about you?"

"As Purdey would say, it's not the first darnfool stunt I've pulled," Gambit said truthfully. "See you at the bottom," were his last words before he dropped out of sight.

Emma watched him drop with a sigh, saw him snag the bottom rung of a handy fire escape ladder to slow his fall, before continuing his trip toward the ground. "Heigh ho," she murmured to herself, gripping the pipe and starting her own quick trip down to join him.


	4. The Chase

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

Gambit and Emma hit the ground and quickly pressed themselves flat against the wall of the building. "Should we make a run for it?" Gambit murmured, peering around the corner of the, on the lookout for any signs of pursuing security.

Emma shook her head. "If we go missing, they'll put two and two together, and I can't let them know I was involved in uncovering their scheme." She aimed a laser gaze at Gambit, cutting through the depths of the night. "For several reasons."

Gambit tightened his jaw. "Yeah," he said knowingly. "You and me both." He looked the window near his right shoulder up and down with an expert's eye. "We'll have to break in again, then."

Emma arched an eyebrow. "After we've only just broken out?"

"We can't go back in the way came." Gambit was rummaging in the bag again. He pulled a simple lock-picking tool from the depths, and set to work on the window. "We get back in, get changed, and join the party."

"Or, if we don't have time, make one of our own."

Gambit left off looking at his work to regard her in puzzlement. "Eh?"

"Never mind." Emma had wicked a little smile on her face. "As long as you don't mind me being handsy again."

"You could certify me if I did—ah!" The window popped open with barely a sound. "Didn't even bruise the lock. You first. Let's get back to the party."

vvv

Klizan was fuming at his security men. "What do you mean, you think someone's been upstairs?"

"We don't know that anyone's been anywhere," the security man tried to placate. "Only, well, someone put the lift on emergency stop, and never started it up again. But there's no one inside, so how did they get out?"

"You say the lift was stopped at a floor when it was found?" Klizan asked sharply.

"Yes, sir."

"Then couldn't some troublemaker have gotten out of the lift at the floor, then pressed the button and left it stuck there?"

The security man looked unconvinced. "Well, yes, I suppose so. But it's a very odd thing to do."

"People are drunk. They do odd things," Klizan snapped. "It might even be some of our people, or are you going to deny that no one on staff has snuck down and sampled some of the delights of the party?" The security man looked rather guilty, and Klizan smirked knowingly. "If that's the case, and this disruption is down to them, then they'll be in deep trouble. Regardless, I don't appreciate you raising the alarm when there are heaven knows how many witnesses about. What will they say if they see my security team all a-flutter? What If the shareholders hear about it? I can't afford any setbacks so close to product launch."

"Yes, yes, I know," the security man temporised. "But it is odd. I thought it should be brought to your attention. In case it was a sign of something…concerning."

"Sir!" A second security man was hastening to Klizan's side. "We've done a very quick headcount, and we're missing two guests."

Klizan narrowed his eyes. "Finally, something concrete to be worried about. Who is the missing pair?"

"Ms. Emma Knight, sir. And her guest, Michael O'Carroll."

"Somehow I'm not surprised," Klizan said wryly. "All right, send out a search party. If they're found somewhere they shouldn't be, then perhaps we'll have more cause to be worried. I'm going to get back to my guests before the rumours start. If they haven't started already with all your ridiculous flapping about." With that, he set off down the hall, long, purposeful strides putting distance between him and his security team.

Klizan wasn't too far from the ballroom when he heard a muffled commotion, followed by whispered words. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned on his heel, attempting to locate the source of the noise. For a moment, there was silence. Then another, louder clunk, as though something had been knocked off of a shelf, reached his ears. Klizan scanned the corridor with his hawklike haze, and came to the conclusion that the unassuming door of a janitor's closet was the site of the commotion. He paused outside the door just as another clatter arose from within, and scowled at the foolishness of it all, at the infuriating turn the evening had taken. Throwing caution to the winds, he seized the doorknob and flung the door open without a word of warning to the person or persons inside.

It was one of those rare situations where the observer's assumptions and reality of the situation neatly dovetailed to work to the participants' advantage. Klizan flung the door open to find Emma and Gambit entwined in what appeared to be a passionate embrace, before they sprang apart in apparent surprise and embarrassment. In any other situation, their actions would warrant suspicion, but in a stroke of luck, every involuntary aspect of their appearance only served to reinforce the image they were trying to convey. So it didn't matter that Gambit's hastily-replaced glasses were askew, nor that his bowtie was untied and the top button of his shirt undone. Nor did it matter that Emma hadn't had the opportunity to put her hair back up, so that it now hung tousled and loose around her shoulders. It didn't even matter that she'd zipped her dress up so hurriedly that one strap of both dress and undergarment were slipping off her shoulder. And it didn't hurt the cause at all that both of them were flushed and panting from making a mad dash back to the closet before they could be caught, which made it appear that they had been doing something else entirely—something quite different, and rather more salacious.

"Ms. Knight!" Klizan exclaimed, more out of shock and an inability to think of anything else to say than outrage or a desire to rebuke. "And Mr. O'Carroll! Your presence was missed, but I would never have thought in my wildest dreams-!"

"It's not what it looks like," Gambit cut in hurriedly, frantically, fingers scrabbling to redo his bowtie and do up his shirt. "Ms. Knight was feeling a bit overcome by the heat in the ballroom and felt a bit faint. She's had a long day, and I thought she'd feel better in a darker room where she could get a bit of privacy—"

Emma held up a hand. "It's all right, Mr. O'Carroll," she said, voice thick with womanly pride and businesslike briskness. "Mr. Klizan," she began, smoothing her hair and adjusting her clothes with a great deal of decorum. "I think there's been a misunderstanding. I'd be incredibly grateful if you'd keep what you've seen to yourself, and prevent any nasty rumours from starting."

"Uh, of course," Klizan sputtered, too distracted by Emma's poise and her efforts to make herself presentable to notice that Gambit had picked up their bag of tricks from where it sat at their feet and draped his jacket protectively over it. "From one businessperson to another, I understand how important the CEO's reputation is to the health of a company."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Klizan," Emma enthused, clasping his hand in both of hers in gratitude. "Your discretion will not be forgotten. But now, I think Mr. O'Carroll and I ought to take our leave."

"Oh yes, yes," Klizan agreed vaguely, as Emma took Gambit's arm and started to steer him down the corridor. "It was a pleasure to have you."

"Oh, believe me. The pleasure was all mine," Emma said over her shoulder. She caught a glimpse of Klizan's blushing visage just before they turned the corner.

"Do you think he bought it?" Gambit murmured out of the corner of his mouth as soon as they reached the car park.

"There are more than enough rumours about my love life to support it," Emma pointed out, finding her car keys in a hidden pocket of her skirt. "And we gave him his own personal show to reinforce them."

Gambit tsked. "I knew it," he said, opening the passenger side door and tossing the bag inside. "You always thought that might be our way out, didn't you? And here I thought you liked me for my winning personality."

Emma feigned sympathy. "I'm sure your ego will survive," she predicted, sliding into the driver's seat.

"I feel so used," Gambit bemoaned in mock dismay, slumping into the passenger seat and splaying his hand across his forehead like a damsel in an old Western. Emma laughed as she turned the engine over. "But seriously," Gambit continued. "Do you think Klizan will keep quiet? He could easily spread rumours about what went on, try to use them to undermine your company."

"If we're successful tonight, he won't be in a position to talk to anyone by the morning," Emma pointed out, pulling out of the car park at speed.

"People do talk in prison," Gambit reminded.

"Desperate people," Emma asserted. "And he will sound desperate. Besides, his whole story will come apart when it transpires that my mystery man doesn't exist."

Gambit shook his head in admiration. "You have a devious mind, Emma."

Emma winked. "I learned from the best. Let's see what this factory has to show us."

vvv

As it turned out, the factory had plenty to show them. Rather more than they'd counted on. Unfortunately.

"It's always been like this," Emma sighed, feet dangling just above the floor. "I'd be captured, and inevitably wind up tied to some sort of device. A dentist's chair, a wine press, a saddle—without the horse, naturally." She stretched her legs straight out in front of her and regarded the tips of her booty-clad toes with a puzzled little frown. "I'm not sure whether I'm relieved or disappointed that nothing has changed."

"Hmmm," Gambit replied, examining the cuffs around his wrists with interest. The extra inches he had on Emma meant he, unlike her, could touch the floor, albeit just barely. "Well, you can't have everything. There are only so many things your average baddie can do with intruders. I'm always finding Purdey tied to chair, but I'm too relieved that they haven't shot her to worry about whether they're being innovative."

"Mmm." Emma adjusted her grip on the pipe mounted in the ceiling, to which they were currently chained. She could let herself dangle, she knew, but the cuffs would cut into her wrists rather painfully. "They do seem to be less creative than they used to be. Pipes and chairs cannot possibly compete with a wine press."

"Maybe the budget wouldn't stretch that far," Gambit quipped. "Anyway, do you fancy escaping before they do decide to get creative by, say, running us through the assembly line?"

"That would be more interesting," Emma acknowledged. "But very unpleasant. And I have a meeting in the morning that I simply cannot miss." She twisted sideways and tipped her head back, presenting her long auburn strands to Gambit. "Hairpin," she told his mildly bemused expression.

"Ah." Gambit slid his own cuffs down the pipe to get closer, and contorted his arms until he could loosen the bit of metal from Emma's titian tresses. "Thanks. They took my lockpicking kit off me."

"I know. Very inconvenient." Emma released one hand from the pipe and held it out for Gambit to work on the cuff. "But I trust you've done more with less."

"Purdey doesn't generally go in for hairpins," Gambit told her, twisting the metal expertly within the keyhole. "She cut her hair short not long after she went on active duty. Said it wasn't practical. But I did get us out of a tight spot using an emergency safety pin hidden in the waistband of her skirt once."

Emma cocked her head to one side, impressed. "Clever girl."

Gambit couldn't disguise the fond smile that rose to his lips. "Yeah. Yeah, she is."

Emma smiled a smile of her own, this one much more knowing. She might have commented further, but it was at that moment that the cuffs came away with a satisfying click. Emma dropped to the floor with catlike grace, the cuffs still dangling from her other wrist. Gambit started to work on his own cuffs, but Emma held up a hand to stop him. "I'll see if I can borrow the keys."

"I'm sure most men would be happy to oblige you." Gambit quirked an eyebrow at her. "But I think this lot might be stubborn. Maybe if you ask nicely."

"I intend to," Emma said, tongue firmly in cheek. "After some suitable amateur dramatics. I hope you appreciate the classics: 'My friend is dying' and 'We have you surrounded' always play well."

"I've always been partial to 'You don't know who I am, do you?'" Gambit volunteered, still working on his own cuffs, despite Emma's instructions. "No one wants to find out that they've arrested the wrong man, especially when he just might be friends with the man at the top."

Emma nodded in approval. "All very suitable," she pronounced. "But sometimes simplicity is the best option." She stood to one side of the door and started to scream, loudly and clearly, with just the right amount of panic. "Help! Help! Oh, someone help us, please!"

It didn't take long for Emma's cries to evoke a response, as evidenced by the sound of running feet on the other side of the door. It was quickly followed by the click of a key in a lock, and then the door swung open to reveal an armed man. Gambit shot him a lightning quick smile. "Could I borrow your keys?"

The man didn't have time to form a response to this outrageous quest before the blade of Emma's hand came down hard on his wrist. He cried out sharply in pain, but Emma was already darting forward, landing a series of expert blows that Gambit forwent working on his cuffs to watch and appreciate. It was always a pleasure to observe a fellow expert in the martial arts at work, and it was doubly so when it was Emma, a master in the field of espionage, and many other fields besides. The man went down in a heap, and Emma pushed her hair back from her forehead with a certain amount of satisfied finality. She caught Gambit's eye.

"I hope you were taking notes," she quipped.

"Committing it to memory would be closer to the truth," Gambit said with undisguised admiration. Without warning, his expression dissolved into alarm. "Look out!"

Emma ducked automatically, turning and head-butting the man who had just appeared behind her, sending him crashing forward across her back and onto the floor. He regained his feet quicker than Emma anticipated as she whirled around, flipping her hair away with the snap of her neck. She saw the gun swing up just a second too late. But that meant her attacker's back was to Gambit, a mistake he quickly regretted the moment Gambit wrapped his ankles around his neck from behind. The gun was quickly dropped in favour of trying to pry Gambit's booted feet away from his windpipe. That left Emma with nothing to do but unclip the keys from his belt before he sank to the floor unconscious. "Nice footwork," Emma complimented, as Gambit returned his feet to the floor.

"Just a little pressure at the right point," Gambit chorused, quoting himself, and then felt the slightest flicker of guilt as he recalled saying the same thing to Purdey on assignment many times. He found himself suddenly wondering what she was doing at that moment, even as Emma set about unlocking first her remaining cuff, and then his. Sleeping, probably. Alone in her bed. What if she needed someone to warm her up?

"I hope the pressure hasn't got to you," Emma observed, already transferring the unlocked cuffs to the guards' wrists, albeit foregoing the bar in the ceiling in favour of the more reachable radiator.

"Hmm?" Gambit murmured distractedly, rubbing his chafed wrists.

"You were miles away," Emma observed, finishing with the guards and retrieving something from the floor. "Are you all right? Only I don't fancy waiting for the reinforcements."

"Oh, yeah. Fine." Gambit gave her a small smile. "Let's go."

"Good." Emma handed Gambit his Smith and Wesson, which had been taken from him when they were captured. "I think this belongs to you. Follow me. I have an idea."

"More than one, I'll bet," Gambit said knowingly, returning the gun to its holster.

They dashed out onto the factory floor, and Emma nearly slammed headfirst into a group of guards who had been attracted by the noisy dispatching of their colleagues. "Whoops!" Emma exclaimed, grabbing the closest guard's gun by the barrel and using it as leverage to spin him around and send him crashing into his friends. Another unfortunate nearby received Emma's bootie-clad foot to his chest for his troubles. Gambit, just catching up, regarded the thinned out ranks with a total lack of surprise. "Kept all the fun for yourself?" he commented, even as his fist connected with the nearest man's jaw.

"I thought you might appreciate the opportunity to give them personal, one on one attention," Emma quipped, hurrying to a control panel for one of the assembly lines and flicking some switches.

"You shouldn't have," Gambit deadpanned, driving his elbow back into the stomach of the guard behind him, one of the few who had managed to disentangle himself from Emma's pile-up.

"I have a very giving nature," Emma explained, moving on to the next panel and fiddling with more controls.

"This lot definitely keeps giving," Gambit grunted, twisting around and landing a series of expert blows on a third man just behind him. "Do you have a plan, other than for your generousity to kill me?"

"I'm working on it!" Emma exclaimed, dashing off into the distance, voice fading as she went. "Just keep them busy!"

Gambit brought his knee up to crack one of the downed men in the jaw, and almost sighed when a forearm clamped itself across his throat. "They're definitely keeping me busy," he half-muttered, half-wheezed, before bending at the waist and throwing his attacker over his head. He whirled around to face off against his remaining opponents, falling easily into a karate stance. "Come on, then. I haven't got all night. And I warn you that there are at least two very beautiful, very dangerous women who'll be very, very annoyed with you if I turn up dead."

Emma, meanwhile, was flitting from machine to machine like a catsuited hummingbird, making changes to settings and calibrations that would ensure that this factory, at least, wouldn't be able to manufacture any dastardly components—illegal, faulty, or otherwise—no matter how long the inevitable investigation took. She'd just finished altering the settings to her satisfaction, anticipating the chaos come morning, when she spotted a door labelled 'Storeroom' that she and Gambit hadn't investigated on their way in. Emma opened it without hesitation, was greeted with stacks upon stacks of completed components. Emma pursed her lips as she regarded them, then her expression lightened as she noticed a fire alarm mounted on the wall, just inside the door. Emma smiled.

A few minutes later, having witnessed a very satisfactory indoor rainstorm that was quickly rendering the completed components to a mass of very extensive doorstops, Emma returned to where she'd left Gambit and the guards, face clouded with anxiety. She knew Gambit was more than capable in a fight, and she had evened the odds a little before she departed, but all the same, she had left him with more than a comfortable number of opponents, and she was starting to wonder if, in her personal quest to ensure that Klizan Aerotech didn't harm anyone with their dastardly dealings, she hadn't rather overplayed her hand, and left her willing pro bono accomplice holding the bag. She picked up the pace as she pictured trying to explain to Steed and Purdey that she'd gone and gotten the third part of their triumvirate killed on her own personal vendetta. Not to mention that she quite liked Gambit herself, and good friends were hard enough to find without throwing them to the lions at the first sign of trouble.

And so, Emma returned with the awful gnawing fear that she'd discover Gambit at best captured, and at worse dead, only to find the man himself standing in the midst of a host of unconscious bodies, panting heavily and mopping his sweat-stained brow as he leaned on a conveyor belt. Emma stopped short and felt a relieved, impressed smile stretch her lips as she crossed her arms. "I hope you weren't bored," she said with a laugh in her voice, as Gambit tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket.

Gambit grinned back wearily. "I think I could do with some boredom after this," he said ruefully, picking his way through the pile of bodies. "Purdey and Steed are going to wonder why I'm going to come back from leave more exhausted than when I left."

"Never mind. It'll keep you sharp," Emma said reassuringly, giving Gambit a somewhat patronising, comforting pat on the chest. "I think I've accomplished everything I can here."

"You mean you've finished wreaking havoc and destruction wherever you go?" Gambit said knowingly. He tilted his head and listened to the shrill music of the fire alarm with a wry smile. "We're going to have company soon, so unless you've changed your mind and want to stick around and become an official part of this business…" He regarded Emma with interest.

"I think I'd rather steal away into the night while the stealing's still on offer," Emma declared, nodding at Gambit's stack of defeated adversaries. "After we've locked them up somewhere safe, of course."

"Of course," Gambit sighed, turning resignedly back to his vanquished foes and lifting one up by the shoulders. "If I'd known you were going to need so much heavy lifting, I would've started doing heavier weights in anticipation."

"I'm sure you'll cope admirably," Emma said confidently. "Here, let me help."

"You're too kind," Gambit said wryly, but he accepted Emma's help gratefully.

vvv

Gambit ducked out of the phone box and slid effortlessly into the Lotus' passenger seat. "Someone will be at the factory soon," he told her, as Emma put the car into gear.

"Good," Emma pronounced, pulling smoothly away from the curb. "You told them everything?"

"Everything they needed to know," Gambit clarified with a sly smile.

"No names, then?"

"They didn't need to know," Gambit said simply.

Emma shook her head in a mixture of disbelief and admiration. "You did promise," she reminded herself.

"And I always keep my promises," Gambit chorused, following a well-worn script.

"Always?" Emma regarded him inquisitively.

Gambit winked at her. "Always."

"And if you can't?"

"I wouldn't promise if I wasn't sure I could deliver," Gambit told her seriously.

"Well, if you're interested, I can promise you a very nice drink at mine to round out the evening," Emma offered. "And that's one promise I think I can safely keep."

"My favourite kind," Gambit said with a grin. "Lead on, Ms. Knight."

Emma inclined her head in gracious acknowledgement. "I shall, Mr. Gambit."

They drove along in companionable silence for a moment, before it was shattered by Emma checking her rearview mirror one too many times for Gambit's liking. "What is it?" he wanted to know.

Emma regarded him with creases between her lovely, impeccably-groomed eyebrows. "It may be nothing."

Gambit shook his head immediately. "You're not one to jump at shadows. If you've seen something, you've seen something. What is it?"

"The car behind us," Emma confided. "I think we're being followed."

Gambit checked his rearview mirror. "Do you recognise it?"

"No," Emma said confidently. "But I suspect it's not a coincidence that I'm being followed on today of all days."

"Klizan?"

"Almost certainly."

Gambit worked his jaw gently. "Can you lose them?"

Emma regarded him with amusement. "I'm surprised you have to ask." Without warning, she stepped down hard on the gas. The Lotus leapt forward like a caged animal, completely in tune with its owner. Gambit watched the tailing car recede into the distance with a hawklike gaze.

"They'll know we've spotted them," he said softly.

"Of course." Emma flicked her eyes away from her driving momentarily, trying to read Gambit's thoughts. "I think I can keep ahead of them."

"Yeah, you can," Gambit agreed. "But they might have friends."

"Another car?" Emma hazarded. "But where-?" Without warning, another vehicle swerved out of a nearby bypass, crowding the Lotus so violently that Emma was forced to swerve toward the ditch to keep from being crashed into. Gambit swore as Emma wrestled with the wheel, trying to keep the Lotus on the road and ahead of the attacking car. She shot a sidelong glance at Gambit, saw the revolver appear in his hand as if by magic. He caught her eye, saturnine gaze penetrating in the glare of the headlights on the road ahead.

"You drive," he ordered, easing back the hammer on the Smith and Wesson. "I'll shoot." Without further ado, he put words to actions, and unbuckled his safety belt, before rolling down the passenger side window. Emma tried not to think about the safety implications of Gambit leaning half out of the car, and focussed on her driving instead.

There was a series of deafening cracks throughout the car's cabin, as Gambit loosed off a string of shots, and Emma was pleased to see that the car trailing them, which had caught up due to the timely interference of its friends, slough off into the ditch. Gambit kept an eye on it until it receded from view, but Emma's sudden cry of alarm had him twisting around in his seat as fast as he could. The car to their right had caught up, and was now making much more aggressive attempts to force them off-road. Emma was prevented from speeding ahead once more by a third car, which had suddenly appeared in front of them, boxing than in and keeping them from executing any evasive manoeuvres. Gambit exchanged alarmed glances with Emma, but brandished his gun and indicated that he'd be going after the car beside them first. Maybe, just maybe, with it out of commission they'd be able to reverse and pull away. Emma nodded in understanding, leaned back as far as she could in her seat so she'd be out of Gambit's line of fire. Gambit lined up a shot, hands steady, eye in.

There was a shot.

But it didn't come from Gambit.

Emma held up an arm to protect herself from the glass raining down on her from the driver's side window. She looked up just in time to see Gambit, dazed, clutch at his chest, before meeting her eyes with a mixture of dismay and confusion. "Mike!" Emma cried in alarm, torn between keeping the car on the road and checking Gambit for damage.

"Emma…" Gambit slurred, gun slipping from nerveless fingers. "Watch…out. They'll…try for you…next." With that, he slumped against the passenger side door, eyes fluttering shut, and went very still.

"Mike!" Emma called urgently, risked taking one hand off the wheel to scrabble around for a pulse, all while trying to keep from being run off the road. She didn't find it before another shot rumbled through the night. Emma felt a sharp pain, then saw blackness creep in at the edges of her vision.

The car beside her, sensing that she was incapacitated, pressed home its advantage, swerving violently toward her, nudging the Lotus off the road. Emma struggled to maintain control, but her consciousness was fading fast, and it was all she could do to control the car's tumble into the ditch as best she could. As she sat there, hunched over the steering wheel, she was dimly aware of the cars stopping and people getting out, before her eyes slid shut, and she submitted to the blackness completely.


	5. The Package Deal

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

Purdey sat at her typewriter, tapping her pen idly against her lips, the burble of the office around her fading into the distance. She hadn't been able to concentrate on anything properly since she'd left Gambit's flat. She knew, could just feel, that there was something more behind his sudden absence than Steed had let on. No matter how many perfectly reasonable explanations she came up with, and how hard she tried to convince herself that they were true, her gut still told her there was something wrong, some missing piece of the puzzle that she was at a loss to locate. She still had no way of working out where, exactly, Gambit could have gone. His flat was a dead end, and so was his phone call to Steed. It pained her to admit it, but she kept coming back to the same conclusion—she would have to wait for Gambit to return and ask him herself. But that level of passivity still irked her, as much as it had at lunch. And she was still fighting that ominous sense that Gambit might not ever come back. Not out of choice—she had not the slightest suspicion that he was something as ridiculous as a double agent who had sensed his imminent discovery and scarpered. She knew Gambit, as a man, as a person; knew his quality—loyal, honourable, true. So she had no fears about Gambit's motivations. It was those of others that made her worry. They'd already put away a number of nasty characters in their time together, and Purdey had gleaned enough from the scant clues she'd uncovered about Gambit's backstory to know there was no shortage of dangerous people in his past, any one of whom could make trouble for him under the right circumstances. That was what she was worried about, whether Gambit had been forced to run against his will, or had been caught. And if that was true, then every second she sat there, waiting for him to return under his own steam, was a second when he could be in deep trouble. Interrogated. Tortured. Transported out of the country.

Killed.

"Purdey?"

Purdey sat up with a start, and swivelled around in her chair. Steed was standing beside her desk, bowler and umbrella in hand, regarding her with a modicum of concern. Purdey glanced around the office and realised that it was deserted—everyone had packed up for the day while she sat there oblivious, lost in thought. She realised she'd probably been staring off into space for the better part of an hour. No wonder Steed looked concerned.

"Purdey?" Steed repeated. "Are you feeling all right?'

"Sorry, Steed," Purdey apologised. "I was miles away. I was trying to finish some old paperwork, but…" She trailed off and shrugged. "I suppose I wasn't under enough pressure to really commit to it."

"On the contrary, I think you were under plenty of pressure, but not the sort that would help you with your paperwork." Steed perched on the edge of her desk. "What's troubling you?"

Purdey sighed and put her pen in the cup at the corner of the desk. "Nothing," she said, trying to convince herself as much as Steed. "You haven't heard from Gambit, have you?"

Steed arched one of his eyebrows in a mixture of bemusement and mild alarm. "No. Should I have?"

Purdey sighed again. "I suppose not." She pulled the page out of her typewriter with feeling, not able to conceal the furrows that were appearing between her brows of their own volition. "He'll be back tomorrow. Isn't that what he said?"

"Yes," Steed confirmed, a knowing smile replacing his frown of concern. "You sound as though you don't believe him."

"I don't know what to think or believe," Purdey admitted, standing up from her chair.

"But you think something's wrong?" Steed surmised.

Purdey nodded. "Not wrong, necessarily. But I have the sense that there's more to his day off than what he said." She shrugged and smiled helplessly. "I don't have any concrete proof, it's just a—"

"Feeling?" Steed finished knowingly. "The best reason of all."

"Yes, but you don't seem worried," Purdey noted. "Doesn't it strike you as odd, Gambit suddenly asking for time off?"

"It might," Steed acknowledged, "if I had all the pieces. But people are complicated, Purdey. Gambit's entitled to a private life, and he can be very private indeed. Perhaps he has an ill family member in need of assistance?"

Purdey bit her lip. "I hadn't thought of that," she confessed, somewhat sheepishly.

Steed's smile was gentle. "It's a hazard of this line of work. We spend so much time together, the idea that we might have anything or anyone else in our lives seems preposterous. But if it were me, I'd like Gambit to respect my privacy when it was appropriate, so I think we ought to accord him the same privilege."

"I suppose," Purdey said begrudgingly, her inherent nosiness getting the better of her. "You don't think that he's in trouble, do you?"

Steed laughed. "Anything's possible where Gambit's concerned. If he doesn't turn up tomorrow, we'll certainly send out a search party. But Gambit's an extremely capable fellow. He can take care of himself."

vvv

"Argh." Mike Gambit opened his eyes and immediately regretted it, the bright lights of the room stabbing through his already established headache. He considered the wisdom of sitting up, and calculated the chances of his head cleaving in two if he did. The non-agonising segment of his brain that was responsible for rational thought pointed out that if that were liable to happen, he'd already be dead, but all Gambit came up with in response was that, given his headache, that might have happened already. After five minutes of lying there in agony arguing with himself, he came to the conclusion that, dead or not, just lying there in his misery wasn't particularly pleasant, so out of sheer force of will, he managed to prop himself up on his elbows with a groan and assess his situation through blurry, squinting, blinking eyes. Gambit reached up to rub them in hopes of clearing his vision, and was stopped short by the familiar bite of metal into his left wrist. Gambit looked down at his hand, still squinting uncomprehendingly, and found it encircled by the shiny, silver metal of a handcuff. Slowly, with his head still pounding, Gambit followed the chain attached to the cuff along the surface of what he realised was a mattress, to where it was wended around a bar attached to what he was just lucid enough to work out was part of the bed's headboard. With eyes that still weren't focussing very well, he followed the loop of the chain as it stretched from the other side of the bar and away, and then ran his eyes, link by link, along the chain until it ended at another cuff around another wrist.

Gambit shook his head and blinked twice more, warding off a bout of double vision, and only then did he feel equal to following the wrist to its attached arm, and the arm to a body, and the body to a head, with a face half-obscured by a cascade of auburn hair. 'Emma,' his brain identified woozily. 'That's Emma.' With great effort, he put together the pieces of the puzzle—Emma plus handcuff plus headboard plus bed plus another handcuff plus him equalled…The answer was enough shake off the remains of the dazedness. He and Emma were handcuffed together on a bed. And they definitely hadn't put themselves there. Gambit cast his mind back, suddenly remembered the flash of headlights and the crunch of metal on metal. He and Emma had been on their way back from the factory when they'd been intercepted-violently. He spared half a thought for the poor, loyal Lotus before he reached over and shook the still-unconscious Emma's shoulder. "Wake up, Emma," he muttered, words slurred more than he was willing to admit to himself. "I don't remember booking us a room."

Emma lifted her head, and an eye blinked blearily at him from behind the curtain of hair. "Oh," came the groggy reply.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Gambit murmured, tightening his jaw. "You okay?"

"I think so." Emma propped herself up on one elbow and swept her hair back so she could see. She looked vaguely around the room. "What happened?"

"They shot at us, I think. Then ran us off the road," Gambit hazarded, sitting upright and starting to test the strength of the bar in the headboard around which the chain of their cuffs was currently wound. The bed looked old, as did everything else in the bedroom they'd been imprisoned in, which Gambit could only assume was located in a dilapidated old house. There was a single window half-obscured by tattered old curtains, and the bed shared the space with a rickety-looking old wardrobe upon which rested a basin that was caked with years of grime.

"Oh yes," Emma recalled belatedly, still obviously shaking off the effects of unconsciousness. "I hope my car's accommodations are rather better." She took in the peeling floral wallpaper with something less than enthusiasm.

"You'll have to have a word with their decorators," Gambit quipped, feeling the bar give way under his assault and detach from the headboard proper. He cast the piece of metal aside with satisfaction. "Any more hair pins?" he asked Emma hopefully, holding up his chained wrist.

Emma ran her hand through her auburn tresses and came up empty. "I think they might be on to us," she sighed in frustration.

Gambit worked his jaw gently. "I guess we'll have to make do as a package deal."

"As arranged marriages go, it could be worse," Emma said wryly, sitting up and scooting over on the bed so both her and Gambit could look out the window.

Gambit arched an amused eyebrow. "Is that proposal?"

"I like to keep an open mind," Emma said, tongue-in-cheek. "But whatever happens, don't expect me to do your laundry."

"I am housebroken, you know."

"I'll bear that in mind," They each swept the curtain aside and surveyed their surroundings, but the dark of the night meant there was very little to see.

"What do you think?" Gambit wanted to know. "Fancy another dive off the top floor?"

Emma bit her lip. "It might be difficult to run chained together."

"Waiting around for whoever grabbed us doesn't sound too appealing, either," Gambit pointed out. "Something tells me they aren't going to ask us for our redecorating tips."

"What a pity. I could do so much if I had my swatches at hand." Emma glanced around their surroundings. "Let's try the front door before we let gravity decide our fate," she suggested, and the pair clamoured over the bed once more, cuffed arms held between them. Emma tried the door, found it locked as expected, then kicked it a little experimentally. "Naturally, the one part of this room not falling into wrack and ruin is the door," she exclaimed in frustration, then stiffened in alarm. "Someone's coming," she hissed. As one, Gambit and Emma ducked to one side of the door, then waited in tense silence as it was unlocked and swung open. Both gripping the chain dangling between them so it wouldn't rattle and reveal their position, they waited until they saw a hand holding a gun, then simultaneously slammed their shoulders into the door. There was a cry as their victim felt the full force of the ancient-yet-sturdy wood, and dropped the gun. Emma and Gambit swung the door back as one, Gambit ducking to scoop up the discarded weapon as Emma aimed an expert karate chop at the stunned man's throat, then brought both hands both down hard on the base of the man's neck as he doubled over in pain. He fell at her feet, and Emma tossed her head, auburn hair flipping back over her forehead, only to come face to face with another heavy, who had been just about to join his fallen friend over the threshold.

"Hold it!" Gambit ordered, pulling back the trigger of his purloined gun, but the man kept coming. "Don't say I didn't warn you," Gambit said wryly, and aimed a shot at the brute's shoulder. There was a loud click, but no gun shot. Emma and Gambit exchanged alarmed expressions. "Not really fair, is it?" Gambit opined, popping out the clip to find that it was empty as his assailant looked on with a smug expression.

"Very unsporting," Emma agreed. "Although, to be fair, you did steal their gun."

"You're right," Gambit conceded, flashing a signature lightning quick smile at the now- befuddled man currently bearing witness to their conversation. "I apologise. You can have it back. Catch!" Gambit tossed the gun in an overhead throw, and was delighted to see the man's eyes track the object as he instinctively attempted to catch it. That gave Gambit all the opportunity he needed to step into the man's personal space and land a series of lightning fast blows to his body—a quick punch to the solar plexus, a perfectly angled karate chop to the neck, a deft block of an attempted counterattack, then a follow-up blow to the base of the spine, before he snapped the man's head back with an exquisitely accurate upper hook that landed under his opponent's chin. His assailant folded neatly, sinking blissfully into unconsciousness.

Gambit turned to Emma and flexed his left hand, which had been the only one he'd had free in the fight, the other still being firmly chained to Emma. "Not bad," she praised.

"Good exercise," Gambit acknowledged, "but I like watching you at work more."

Emma nodded in gracious acceptance of the compliment. "We ought to book a sparring session. I'm always looking for—"

"Victims?" Gambit quipped.

"Partners," Emma countered, as they picked their way over the fallen bodies.

"Well, I'm always happy to get you on the mat," Gambit told her, and tongue-in-cheek.

"You may come to regret those words," Emma warned, lopsided smile flashing into existence.

"I doubt it," Gambit said unrepentantly as they crept down the dilapidated house's hallway, working their way around fallen paintings and rotting sticks of furniture.

"And I doubt that you'll live to see another day," came a voice over their shoulders.

vvv

Purdey got into her car in the Ministry car park fully intending to go straight home. After her talk with Steed, she'd convinced herself that she was being ridiculous, and that Gambit was off doing something that was perfectly innocuous.

And yet, as she sat at the traffic light, with the turn that would take her to Gambit's just ahead, she felt her previous unease return. What if Steed, uncharacteristically, was wrong, and Gambit really was in trouble? A quick trip to his flat to check that he was home, safe and sound, wouldn't hurt, surely? Whatever business Gambit had would surely be finished by now, she reasoned, meaning he'd be home in time to prepare for the next day of work. All she needed was the light in his window to assure her that all was well. Then she could go to bed and sleep soundly, safe in the knowledge that Steed had been right, and she had just been letting her imagination run away with her.

The light changed, and despite the sensible part of her brain telling her that she was being silly, she found herself slowly, inexorably, drawn to the turn that would take her to Gambit's. Just a quick look, she promised herself. That was all she needed to sleep soundly.

Gambit lived just around the corner from Purdey, in Steed's words, and it didn't take long for his block to loom into view. Purdey resisted the urge to crane her neck and look at his window while she was driving, forcing herself to pull over before she commenced rubbernecking. Congratulating herself on her one modicum of self-control, she peered anxiously up at the windows she knew belonged to Gambit's corner flat, hoping against hope that she would see a twinkle, a flicker, anything that would indicate the owner was at home.

They were dark.

Purdey bit her lip and considered the possibilities. It was much too early for Gambit to have turned in. Even if he'd had a rough day, Purdey knew the man well enough to know that he wouldn't go to bed early, preferring instead to read or sketch, or do just about anything that would help him wind down before he surrendered to sleep. So if the windows were dark, it meant that Gambit was either sitting quietly in the dark, or he wasn't there.

Purdey double-checked the curb, and found that the Rover and XJS were still in place, unmoved. So Gambit hadn't come home and then gone somewhere else of his own volition. Unless he'd been taken and then unceremoniously dumped back at his flat, unconscious. Or dead.

More nightmares conjured up by Purdey's all-too-vivid imagination. But now that they'd appeared, she couldn't shake them. The only way to eliminate those possibilities was to go up and check for herself, and swallow her pride if Gambit answered the door and grinned in that pleased way of his about the fact that she'd chosen to call on him at a relatively late hour. She couldn't think up a story to explain away her presence if he did, but somehow Gambit's potentially inflated ego was the least of her worries, which only served to tell her how worried she really was. Cursing her lack of discipline and racing mind, and Mike Gambit for causing her such consternation, she opened her car door and stepped out onto the pavement to go and see for herself.

She repeated the buzzer and door-knocking ritual she'd performed at lunchtime, but with the same results as before. Unless Gambit had suddenly become a very heavy sleeper, he couldn't have failed to notice the commotion, and he was not at home. All the same, when Purdey unlocked the front door and flicked on the light, she was hoping against hope that she'd be greeted by the vision of Gambit scrabbling upright in surprise, sheet wrapped around his body as per usual, blinking at the brightness of the light before seeing it was her and making some wry comment about whether she wanted him to tuck her in. But the flat she was met with appeared unchanged from the one she'd left at lunch. Purdey sighed and bit her lip, sloped over to flop resignedly onto the couch, and looked idly around the space. "Now what?" she said out loud, as though Gambit had a direct line to the space. "You really are making this very difficult for everyone involved, Mike Gambit," she scolded, feeling moderately better for venting her frustrations despite the singular lack of the man himself. "You know how to make a girl worry." She checked her watch, and scowled. "I hope wherever you are, you're having a really lousy time!" she declared. "And if you think I'm helping you nurse your hangover or what have you in the morning, you are very much mistaken. So don't expect any sympathy when you come back." A little voice in her head added, 'If you come back.' Purdey shut her eyes against the thought, and the shudder of fear that rippled though her. "Please come back," she whispered, in a small voice. She rose and crossed to the door, cast one last look over her shoulder at the empty flat before she left. "I'll be back tomorrow," she promised herself as much as him. "You had better be here, Mike Gambit, or I don't know what I'll do." With that, she switched off the light, plunging the flat into darkness, before turning to carry her suddenly-weary bones home.


	6. The Plot

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

Emma and Gambit stood, chain held carefully between them, facing the source of the new threat. A man they both recognised as Klizan's chief of security was at the top of a short flight of what had probably been the servant's stairs, with a gun trained on them.

"Sorry," Gambit said levelly. "I've seen that trick before."

Klizan's chief of security seemed momentarily thrown by the comment, but then realised Gambit was looking at the gun in his hand. "Ah, yes," he said, a slow, sinister smile creeping across his face. "I couldn't risk my colleagues killing you before time. They can be very impetuous, you see. Lack the subtleties of a professional."

"Good help is remarkably hard to find," Emma sympathised, earning a glare of reproach for her flippancy. That only made Gambit grin, too, rather spoiling the effect the security chief was going for.

"Yes, but I am a professional," he growled. "In more than one sense of the word. So if you think I'm unarmed—" He pointed his gun at the ceiling and loosed off a shot. A small measure of plaster dust and a few bits of rotting wood rained down from above, proof that he was telling the truth. The security chief's eerie smile returned as he levelled his weapon at Gambit and Emma. "Kindly let my colleagues escort you back to your room without too much fuss," he instructed, and Emma and Gambit twisted around to see two more men coming up the main stairs, advancing on them menacingly. "Come along quietly, please," the chief went on as the men closed in and Gambit and Emma dropped automatically into a fighting stance. "I will shoot you," he added warningly. "I'm not so concerned about your well-being that I'll hold off if you attack."

Gambit and Emma exchanged resigned glances, then put their hands up, deciding to play along for the moment. "Excellent," the security chief praised, as the other two men grabbed them by the shoulders, and started to steer them back toward the bedroom. They nearly tripped over their fallen adversaries in the process, who were only now picking themselves up from the floor. They caught sight of the chief as they regained their footing and grimaced apologetically. "Sorry, Rogers," one said to the chief.

"Idiots," the chief—Rogers-spat, as Gambit and Emma were marched back into their prison. "You underestimated them." He moved to where Gambit and Emma stood, facing the bed, exchanging knowing looks, as their escorts took up position behind them. With a nod, the two men gripping Emma and Gambit's shoulders struck them on the back of the legs, forcing them to fall to their knees. Before they'd had a chance to recover, their heads and shoulders were forced violently onto the bed's disintegrating mattress, heads turning toward one another to avoid inhaling a lungful of dust. Rogers bent to brush some of Emma's hair back from her face. "She may be a girl, but she's no ordinary girl," he sneered, looking into Emma's fiery eyes. "She can kill you as soon as look at you. But then, I suppose not everyone is privy to the story behind Emma Knight's co-called sabbatical from her company, and just what she got up to in the meantime. And with whom." He lowered his face until it was very close to Emma's, even as she struggled against the restraining hands.

"Keep that up and see what happens," Gambit warned, twitching with similarly barely-contained ire.

Rogers turned his attention to Gambit. "And him," he continued, as though Gambit hadn't said anything at all. "The guest list said Michael O'Carroll, Knight Industries' money man, didn't it? But you'd have done well to check through our files. This is Mike Gambit, Ministry man. John Steed's protégé, by all accounts."

"Really? Do you know something I don't?" Gambit said wryly.

Rogers looked Gambit hard in the eye, face once again very close. "Very odd to see you together, though. And very surprising to see Ms. Knight back in action. Did Steed arrange this, I wonder? Or are you two off a little caper of your own?" He tsked in reprimand as he deduced it was the latter. "Oh dear, oh dear, Mr. Gambit. What will your people say about this? What will—what was her name? Your charming partner?" He snapped his fingers as though struggling to recall. "Ah! Purdey. That was it. What will she think? Does she know you're out playing spy games with this legend?"

"You leave Purdey out of it," Gambit growled. "Or you'll see how much you really have underestimated me."

"Oh, struck a nerve, I see." Rogers treated Gambit to an oily grin. "Perhaps we'll have to pay her a visit, find out how much she knows about all of this."

"She doesn't know anything," Emma asserted. "No one at the Ministry does." Rogers turned his attention to her, and even Gambit was alarmed by the burning intensity of her gaze. "This is my operation," Emma went on, with a fierceness that actually seemed to puncture Rogers' sense of superiority. "Mine. Do you understand? And the Ministry may not know that I'm here, but my people certainly do. If you kill us, they'll know it was you." She paused for effect, then added, for emphasis, "They already know about the defective parts in the factory. And so do the authorities. Very soon, it's going to be swarming with police and agents, all closing in on the truth." She raised her head off the mattress, ignoring the pressure of the arm trying to force her back down. With her hair tousled and wild, she looked like a warrior queen, Gambit thought. Magnificent. Formidable. "And everyone will know about your deplorable cost-cutting measures, made at the expense of your customers. Your stock prices will tumble, and your board members will resign. It might even spell the end of Klizan Aerotech. Killing us will only add murder to your charges of criminal negligence." She straightened up further, chin turned up defiantly. "I suggest you have a word with your boss, and persuade him that it's in his best interest to unlock these cuffs and let us go."

Much to her surprise, Klizan's oily smile returned. "Boss?" he laughed. "And who, pray tell, do you think that is, Ms. Knight?"

Emma was clearly taken aback by his comment, but she held firm, unwilling to let herself be rattled for long. "You're Klizan's chief of security, aren't you? That means you report to him. Unless Klizan goes in for unusual managerial structures. Do you report to the chief cook and bottle washer, or the gardener?"

Gambit's mind was working furiously, cycling back through the conversation, searching for something that Klizan had said that had rung an alarm bell in the back of his skull. With a sudden, sickening realisation, he knew what it was. "How did you get those files?"

Rogers tore his gaze away from Emma's taunting visage, temporarily distracted from the tempting prospect of throttling her with his bare hands. "What?"

It was Gambit's turn to raise his head off the bed, eyes piercing. "You said you've read my file. That's how you know who I am." 'Who Purdey is', he added to himself, not wanting to remind Rogers of her if possible. "But who would have access to that sort of intel? A big corporation like Klizan Aerotech?" He shook his head. "No. They go in for research on their competitors. I can see you pulling something together on Emma. But not on me. Not on short notice. You wouldn't have access to my files. You wouldn't even assume I was intelligence. Maybe a corporate spy. Not the real thing." He cocked his head to one side. "Unless you're not actually working for Klizan. Or not only Klizan, but the other side, too."

Rogers beamed at him, like he was a particularly clever child. "I can see why you brought him along," he told Emma. "He's definitely earning his danger pay today. Very astute, Mr. Gambit. Very astute indeed. You're quite right. I am working for someone other than Mr. Klizan. Someone with loftier goals, shall we say?" He looked from Gambit to Emma and back again, looking very pleased with himself. "You think that it's all down to cost-cutting, don't you? A case of business putting its bottom line above its conscience. Trying to sneak one past the authorities, cutting corners because it'll add a few quid to the bottom line. And if a few people get hurt in the process, because things break down, well, that's the cost of doing business, isn't it? These things happen. No one can claim a product is 100% safe, can they? That's what we'll say—or we were going to say. What Klizan was going to say, if anyone found out. But now the cat's out of the bag." He looked hard at Emma. "That's what you said, isn't it? People—your people—know about it and they've told the powers that be. You Now there will be recalls, to be sure. Your task is complete. No one will get hurt or suffer any ill effects. The great British public will be saved from the consequences of greed. And that would be true. If that was all we'd done."

Gambit felt a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "What do you mean?" he demanded, voice low and rough.

Rogers turned the oily smile on him. "What do I mean? My dear Mr. Gambit, I thought you might have worked it out already. In fact, I feared it. That was why I had you picked up. If I'd known your intel was so sadly lacking, I could have let you be." He sighed with mock regret. "Too bad. You might have lived. But now I'm going to have to kill you. If I let you go, you'd investigate me, and that would never do. Because what you don't know—what Klizan doesn't even know—is that the cost-cutting was only the beginning. Klizan thinks that's all that's going on—a bit of dodgy fiddling to cut costs. That's what you uncovered, that's what he's complicit in. The problem is, we don't work for him, not really. We just wheedled our way into his organization, promising to do some off-the-books cost-cutting. But what we're actually here to do, the heart of the operation, is sabotage."

Gambit tightened his jaw. "You're working for 'them', aren't you? That's why you have our files."

"Right again. Ms. Knight, do you have anything to contribute?"

Emma's eyes were narrowed. "I'm drawing my own conclusions," she declared airily. "I take it you've been sabotaging parts on all of Klizan's projects? Not only the ones containing the shoddy parts?"

"Excellent. Really excellent."

"And I suppose it's not a coincidence that you targeted Klizan's company, given that he's spent the past year on a military contract?" Emma went on, eyes turning heavenward in thought. "Planes, tanks, even radios, all filled with presumably-faulty components, all designed to fail, and bring the country to its knees in the process?"

"Ah, it's so refreshing to see your business acumen at work along with your espionage skills." Rogers looked to Gambit. "She really is magnificent, isn't she? A pity to destroy such a brilliant intellect in its prime."

Gambit was so busy processing the implications of what Emma had said, he was almost disinterested in the renewed threat to their lives. "That's the real conspiracy, then? Let Klizan bring you in to supposedly cut costs in the dodgiest way possible, then once you have your foot in the door, fiddle about with the military equipment being manufactured, all without him knowing." He cocked his head to one side inquisitively. "What's the play? Disable our defences and launch a full-scale assault, or sell the option to do it in the future to the highest bidder?"

"We'd left our options open, to be perfectly honest," Rogers said blithely. "But now that the pair of you have sent the authorities sniffing around, I expect we'll have to push the button ourselves. It'll take time for them to uncover the sabotage, since even Klizan doesn't know about it, so he can't crack under pressure. But we won't be able to wait too long. Still, I think we'll be able to marshal our forces quickly enough."

"An invasion," Emma said grimly. "And our forces will be helpless."

"Yes, that's the idea," Rogers said mildly. "It's a very small component we've introduced into the equipment. A tiny augmentation that can be used to cause a very small yet crucial malfunctioning of any number of pieces of equipment. Planes, tanks, submarines, computers, all of it. It'll bring you to your knees, and while you're there, we'll—"

"Swoop in and put us down?" Gambit predicted, jaw working madly.

"That's the idea." Rogers sighed and cocked his gun. "But I'm afraid you won't live to see it."

Emma tilted her head inquisitively to one side. "You said Klizan didn't know about this. It must be a very small operation."

"Very small," Rogers confirmed. "Just my security men and I. And a few select people on the assembly line."

Emma's mouth turned down in a mixture of frustration and disconsolation, hair falling like a curtain over her face. "All this time I was focussing on Klizan. And he doesn't even know we're here!"

Rogers seemed delighted by Emma's sudden and uncharacteristic show of weakness. "No one does, my dear. Just me and my men here. Klizan will read about your untimely demise in the papers along with everyone else." He slanted an eyebrow at Gambit. "I'm afraid your death will be met with considerably less fanfare, Mr. Gambit. Your colleagues will mourn you, I'm sure, but only the people in this room will be privy to your true fate. No one will know you were anywhere near Klizan Aerotech."

"No one," Gambit repeated faintly, eyes on Emma, still hidden by her hair. But as Rogers forced them back onto the mattress, Gambit could just see the smile turning the corners of Emma's lips upward, and the way her eyes were dancing.

"No one knows we're here," she echoed, but the despair was gone from her voice, and Gambit realised that his instinct that her behaviour was uncharacteristic was well-founded. She had played weak to find out if their cover was still intact, to work out if anyone knew where they were, save for the men currently in the room with them. And that was a problem they could solve…

"Yes, and while that's still the case," Rogers began, moving out into the hallway, voice getting more distant in the process, "we had better take care of you once and for all." He re-emerged with a large black bag, from which he extracted a device. Emma and Gambit strained their necks to see from the confines of the mattress. "The lovely thing about acting as Klizan's security team is that I have off-hours access to all of the factory facilities. So I'm able to procure the odd bit here and there." He punched a few buttons on the device. "Take this lovely little thing—a small explosive device that punches above its weight. It'll destroy this house, and both of you. Someone else will have the problem of trying to explain what the pair of you were doing out here, alone, together, in the middle of nowhere…" He let the sentence hang. "Although perhaps it'll tell its own story. Never mind. It'll all come out in the wash. Or the fire." He nodded at his colleagues. "You hold them down. You there, take off the cuffs—it'll look suspicious if they're found tied together. You, get the car." The men scattered, and Emma and Gambit found themselves once more pushed hard into the mattress, while a third man sandwiched himself between them, keys in hand. Rogers watched with half an eye, setting the bomb on the rotting wardrobe and giving it an affectionate pat. "The first strike," he murmured, half to himself. "The first of many that'll bring your country to its knees. Just as you are now."

"To quote a friend," Gambit murmured, subtly shifting position in time with Emma, Purdey's voice echoing in his mind, along with an image of her holding a marshmallow pie. "What's wrong with knees?" Without warning, Gambit and Emma swung the chain up and over the neck of the man with the keys, pulling him bodily onto the mattress, where he splayed, flailing, between them. It was enough of a distraction to afford them the small edge they needed. The loosening of the grip on their shoulders gave them the breathing room to each drive the elbow of their other arm into the stomachs of the men holding them. They straightened up as the men doubled over, feet shooting out behind them to drive into the shins of their captors. As the two men went down, Emma and Gambit leapt to their feet, climbing up and over the mattress, turning around as they went to face the other way, before returning to the floor to assess the scene. Rogers had turned from the wardrobe in surprise, brandishing the gun. "Look out!" Gambit cried, gripping the headboard and heaving the bed across the room to slam into Rogers. Emma threw herself forward to intercept the gun as it tumbled onto the mattress from his nerveless fingers, other arm extended to keep from pulling Gambit in her wake. She sprawled headlong onto the mattress, gripped the gun just before one of Rogers' men threw himself at her in an attempt at intercept. Emma fired automatically, and with perfect aim, and he went down. She then rolled to the side to avoid Rogers' foot as he struggled over the headboard onto the mattress. Gambit sprang up onto the surface, wobbling slightly as his boots tore through the frayed cover and became enmired in the stuffing beneath, but regained enough of his footing to grab the lapels of another man as he mounted the bed to swing a punch at him. Gambit dodged, swung a punch of his own that actually hit its mark, then landed an expert chop to the solar plexus, before seizing his opponent's lapels. It was at that moment that he found himself tugged downwards by virtue of his connection to Emma, and made a split second decision to change tack. He dropped into a sitting position, and executed a quick stomach throw. His assailant sailed through the air—straight out the bedroom window. Emma was tussling with Rogers on the bed, but still managed to aim a look at the now-horizontal Gambit as the sound of breaking glass reached her ears. "Naughty," she tsked. "We'll lose our room deposit."

"Air-conditioning," Gambit grunted, kicking at another man who'd stepped into replace his airborne friend. "Thought it was getting stuffy."

"It is rather crowded," Emma agreed, as Gambit did a double-take at her position. She'd somehow managed to wrap her ankles around the neck of one man while still tussling with Rogers. "Next time, I refuse to share a bathroom."

"I'll tell the front desk," Gambit vowed, aiming another kick at the man's head as he came back for round two. He caught him under the chin, and his head snapped back as he tumbled backward and into the wall, before he collapsed, unconscious. He regarded Emma's predicament with an expert eye. "Need any help?" he inquired, more out of politeness than anything. Emma's default setting was to have things in hand. Or ankle, he mentally amended, as the man between Emma's feet slumped unconscious. "Never mind."

"It was a kind offer, well-intended," Emma said gently, with a winning smile. She planted her hand, fingers splayed, across Rogers' face, and pushed, sending him tumbling off the bed and onto the floor. "But if you want to help, you can start by finding your feet. This new jewellery is good for keeping track of your date, but highly impractical for mingling."

"I'll get you a necklace next time," Gambit grunted, gripping the headboard and heaving himself upward, mattress giving way under his boots as he went.

"I think I ought to book the hotel next time as well," Emma opined, plucking at one of the many tufts of white mattress fluff that were marring the aesthetics of her jet black catsuit. "The standards at this one are extremely subpar." She regained her wobbling footing just in time to plant her foot in the middle of the recovering Rogers' chest, sending him tumbling backward to knock his head against the windowsill. Emma nearly lost her balance in the process, the precariousness of the mattress almost negating its advantage as higher ground, and staggered sideways, prevented from tumbling back into the sea of fluff by Gambit, who caught her up in his arms. Emma twitched her nose to dissuade another piece of mattress fluff from climbing up her nostrils, then smiled up at Gambit in her best impression of a damsel in distress. "I thought you might have had your fill of having me in your arms for one night."

Gambit grinned back at her. "It's not the kind of burden you complain about. But we have bigger problems." He nodded at the wardrobe, where the device sat innocently counting down their doom. "Do you think you could defuse it?"

"I could try," Emma replied, and the pair untangled themselves before commencing the short, mincing journey across the mattress to the wardrobe. Emma snatched up the box, turned it over in her hands until she found a panel that was, rather infuriatingly, screwed shut. "I need tools," she fumed distractedly, fingernail finding the seam for the panel but unable to gain any purchase. She turned the box back upright, regarded the timer grimly. "And more time. If I'm reading this right, we only have thirty seconds before the whole building goes!"

vvv

Purdey sat bolt upright with a start, a gasp escaping her lips even as her brain struggled to remember what had woken her in the first place. She sat there for a moment, shoulders heaving, nightgown clinging to her body where sweat had broken out on her skin. She stared out through the beaded curtain into the dark of her living room and started the long, arduous process of gathering her thoughts. Only in the end, there was really only one thing that surfaced to take precedence over all others.

Gambit.

That was it. She couldn't remember what it was she'd dreamt, what the imagers had been, how the plot unfolded. But she knew that, whatever the specifics of it had been, it had boiled down to Gambit. Gambit in danger.

It made sense, really. She'd been worrying about Gambit all day: whether he was all right, what he was doing on his day off, who he was with. And dreams were just one's brain's way of processing whatever was going through it before it was packaged up for the day.

Only, the feeling she'd had when she was asleep, the one that was still tingling through her fingers even now that she was awake, was more urgent than that. More vivid. More real. It wasn't so much a dream. That didn't give what she'd felt the weight and credence it deserved. No, it was more than that.

It was a premonition.

Purdey shook her head, tousled blonde hair swaying in the process. No, that wasn't right, either. It was something unfathomable, like Gambit and Steed's telepathy. A sort of intangible connection between her and him, a psychic tether that neither of them really understood, or even verbally acknowledged, but that they both knew was there, both relied on for their work, both had come to value beyond their professional relationship as something special, important, unique. A bond that made them closer than Purdey had been willing to admit to herself, even as she continued to take both solace and enjoyment from it. But there was no denying it was there now, and Purdey knew, just knew, without being able to explain, that Gambit was in trouble. She didn't know what kind of trouble, or if it had been resolved, but she knew it had happened, the way she knew she was sitting there, in her bedroom, with her heart pounding through the material of her nightgown and sweat trickling down her back.

Gambit was in trouble, and there was nothing she could do, nothing at all, except lay back down and try, desperately, to go back to sleep. She did so, pulling the sheet up to her chin, stared at the alarm clock on her bedside table, at the glowing numbers, and calculated the hours left until Gambit was supposed to be back, when she could call out a search party if he wasn't. As she lay there, trying to will her eyes to close, a sudden thought occurred to her. If she could feel Gambit's distress, maybe she could send a message the other way. It was something she could do, at least. Better than lying silently in the dark. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard. "I'll find you," she whispered. "If you need me, I'll find you, Mike Gambit. Just try to stop me." With that thought drifting out into the psychic realm, she drifted back to sleep.


	7. The Road Back

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

"Throw it out the window!" Gambit advised urgently, and Emma nodded, lifted her arm to do just that, but was stopped short. She twisted around, found a small strap attached to the back of the box. She followed it with her fingers, only to find that it was well and truly lodged in the tangle between the wardrobe and bed. "What are you waiting for?" Gambit demanded, voice betraying his rising alarm.

"It's stuck," Emma shot back, yanking on the strap without success. "I need a knife."

"We don't have a knife," Gambit pointed out, voice tight. "Or any more time." He grabbed Emma's arm and started to drag her across the mattress. "If it can't go out the window, then we'll have to."

"There isn't a handy drainpipe this time," Emma protested, as Gambit kicked away the last few fragments of glass left behind in the frame by the man he'd sent through earlier. "Or a fire escape."

"No," Gambit agreed, peering grimly over the edge and into the black.

"Then how do you propose we get down?"

"Jump, and think soft thoughts," Gambit advised, just before he pulled Emma to him and launched them out into space.

It was a shock, the sudden sensation of being in midair. But Emma was a diver, and her body knew how to rearrange itself as she fell, how to brace itself for impact, without any conscious effort on her part. She felt her hands stretch out in front of her, her legs rearrange into the ideal pose. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Gambit doing the same, could see the muscles flex under the confines of his shirt, preparing for landing. By mutual agreement, they let the chain slacken between them, allowing for maximum flexibility when they landed. The last thing they needed was either of them winding up with a dislocated shoulder or another joint wrenched out of true, all down to an unceremonious yank on the chain caused by a particularly clumsy somersault.

They tucked and rolled like experts as they hit the ground, the soft earth soiling clothes and hair alike as they tumbled out of the sky and onto terra firma, the breath leaving Emma's body as it was knocked from her from the impact. Gasping, Emma found herself deposited a mere foot away from the body of the man Gambit had thrown out of the window, whose neck was canted at an unnatural angle. Emma stared dazedly at the lifeless eyes for a moment, before she was unceremoniously dragged to her feet. She blinked and found herself looking into the determined eyes of Gambit, who was pulling her along despite her stumbling steps, putting as much distance between them and the house as possible. She opened her mouth to ask what the hurry was, but Gambit seemed to read her hazy mind. "That bomb's going to go off any second," he reminded, and Emma realised that what had seemed like an eternity as they tumbled through thin air had been mere seconds, seconds that they couldn't afford to waste by dawdling. She picked up the pace to match Gambit's stride rather than being lugged along in his wake. They made it as far as a small clutch trees a little ways away from the house before the building exploded spectacularly. Gambit and Emma half-leapt, were half-thrown forward by the force of the blast, tumbling into the foliage. Their enforced connection aside, Emma couldn't help but notice that Gambit instinctively shielded her from the blast, body half-covering hers as they lay amongst the weeds and dead leaves, while bits of debris rained down from above.

They lay there for a moment, ears pricked for any follow-up explosions, or the shouts of Rogers' men, but there was nothing. All Emma could hear was the pop and crackle of the flames, and the pounding of her own heart in her ears. She was half-convinced she could hear Gambit's heart as well—at the very least, she could feel it, pounding against her back where Gambit's chest was pressed protectively against it, along with the arm curled around her ribs. All told, it wasn't an unpleasant experience—Gambit exuded a comforting physicality, a protective warmth, reassuring in its solidness and its decency. There was never a hand placed wrong where Gambit was concerned. As she laid there trying to convinced her heart to slow down, Emma mused that Gambit had probably held Purdey in a similar fashion on more than one occasion, wondered if she took the same level of solace and security from it. Perhaps Gambit had temporarily forgotten he wasn't with Purdey when he'd assumed the position. Emma didn't mind if he had. It was simply further proof of how he felt about his partner, regardless of his occasional reticence in talking about her. And it wasn't as though Emma had anything to boast about in the emotional honesty stakes. But Gambit understood her plight, just as she understood his. It was no longer the basis of their relationship, Emma knew—they'd since formed a friendship based on their own merits and mutual regard-but it had been much of the impetus for the start of it. A sort of support group that perhaps only they could ever properly be members of. But there was definitely much more to it now, as that evening had proved. Gambit's friendship and loyalty had been worth their weight in gold throughout the whole of this caper.

After a long moment, Gambit shifted slightly, as though trying to look over his shoulder at the burning building behind them. "You okay?" His voice was low and laced with concern.

"Yes," Emma confirmed, rolling onto her back to allow their cuffed arms to move more freely. Gambit followed suit as she did so, grunting a little as he flopped onto his spine. "Are you?" she asked worriedly.

"I'm fine," Gambit murmured, with the slightest hint of a groan in his voice.

Emma turned to look at him accusingly, but the flickering flames were behind him, and cast his face in shadow. "You don't sound fine," she said sceptically.

"Just bruises. Aches and pains," Gambit dismissed with another grunt. "Nothing broken."

Emma's incredulity deepened. "How can you be sure?"

"Experience," Gambit muttered, easing his way into a sitting position. "I've broken a lot of bones over the years. Remind me to tell you about them sometime."

"I suspect I already know how those stories go," Emma opined, groaning a little herself as she sat up beside him. She didn't think anything of hers was broken either, but she wasn't going to let Gambit know that the question had even crossed her mind. They sat for a moment in silence, nursing their various aches and pains, watching the fire flicker and dance before their eyes as if in a daze. "Do you think any of them survived?" she asked dully.

"Rogers and his men?" Gambit shook his head. "They didn't have enough time to make it to the door. They would have had to go out the window with us." His eyes flickered with memory. "I did throw one of them out earlier. He might have made it."

"No." Emma shook her head, remembering the mangled corpse that had been there when she hit the ground. "He's just over there. Neck broken."

"Oh." Gambit took a moment to digest that information. "If we'd been able to deal with the damn bomb, we might have been able to save them," he sighed. "But we ran out of time."

"They were about to make us, and the rest of the country, run out of time," Emma reminded, starting the long, arduous climb to her feet. "So they rather had a hand in their own fate." She straightened up and looked around vaguely, dusting off her hands as she did so. "I wonder what they did with my car?"

"It's probably around here somewhere," Gambit hypothesised, getting himself vertical and running a hand through his hair to dislodge a few dead leaves and some pieces of wood that had formerly been part of the house. "They wouldn't leave it on the road where it could be found." He nodded at a clutch of cars parked nearby, a little down the driveway from the burning building. "I'll bet they have radios. I'll call in. You go looking for the Lotus."

"All right," Emma agreed, holding up her chained wrist. "But first, we'll need a divorce, or at the very least, a trial separation."

"And I thought we were getting on so well," Gambit quipped.

"It's the venue you picked for the honeymoon that turned me off," Emma teased. "Very unsuitable."

"I can't fault you there," Gambit agreed wearily, matching Emma's half-smile with one of his own. "Come on, then. Let's see if this lot has anything to dissolve an arranged marriage in their nasty bag of tricks."

vvv

"You really do beat all, Michael." Sara Lynley stood with her hands plunged deep into the pockets of her trenchcoat, belt unevenly-knotted, as though tied in haste. Her long, black, curly hair was clipped up at a lopsided angle, visibly askew, adding to her harried-looking appearance. "You ring me at two in the morning, from a number in the middle of nowhere, asking me to meet you, and making me promise not to breathe a word to anyone. And I find you out here with a handful of dead bodies and a burning building. You're not on assignment, you have a mysterious co-conspirator whom you won't name and who has apparently gone on walkabout, and I'm not even going to ask about the cuff." She nodded at the chain still dangling from Gambit's wrist. The other half of the chain was still with Emma, who had gone searching for her car somewhere on the grounds. Their enforced 'marriage' had dissolved as quickly as it had been made, thanks to the discovery of a hacksaw in a nearby toolshed. "Are you trying to be difficult, or do you just stumble into these things by-the-by?"

Gambit grinned sheepishly. "I, uh, was doing a favour for a friend. It sort of…escalated."

Sara regarded him through heavily-lidded eyes. "Do you know, I'd be surprised, except this feels eerily similar to some of the stunts you pulled when we were kids."

Gambit's grin broadened to something more mischievous. "At least it kept things interesting, eh?"

Sara shook her head in fond disbelief. "I could have done with a bit of boredom, to be honest." She pulled her hands from her pockets and massaged her temples with her fingers. "Right. Anything else I should know, other than about what Klizan's people were up to, their true allegiances, and the connection between all this and the doings at the Klizan Aerotech factory?" She regarded him with an intentionally bland expression. "I assume that was also you?"

Gambit looked sheepish again. "Well, me and my friend."

"The nameless one, of course." Sara changed tack and buried her head in her hands. "I don't suppose he or she would be willing to go on the record about any of this?"

"Not with names attached," Gambit confirmed, sucking his teeth. "And about that, if you could keep my name out of it as well, that'd be brilliant. Like I said, I'm on leave right now. This is…extracurricular."

"Yes, of course," Sara muttered, voice muffled by her hands. "Any other miracles you need doing while I'm at it? A foolproof recipe for world peace? A way to turn dross into gold? A number for a good psychiatrist?"

"I know it's asking a lot," Gambit admitted, stepping forward to rest a hand on his cousin's shoulder. "But I appreciate it, more than you know. And so does my friend." He smiled at Sara as she pulled her hands away from her face. "But that friend saw something that needed to be dealt with, and she asked for my help dealing with it. I couldn't say no."

Sara sighed, and smiled for the first time since she'd arrived. "I know, I know. You're too noble and self-sacrificing for your own good. I'm just worried it'll come back to haunt you one day." She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. "I'll take care of things here. You and your friend make yourselves scarce."

Gambit hugged back. "Thanks," he said gratefully. "I owe you one."

Sara snorted. "You owe me for the next five years, you mean. You really are an infuriating idiot, do you know that?"

Gambit grinned. "I love you too, Sara."

vvv

"How did it go?" Emma inquired, striding into the living room just as Gambit returned her telephone's receiver to its cradle. She'd given Gambit a modicum of privacy while he made a follow-up call to Sara that would keep Emma—and hopefully Gambit—out of the subsequent investigation, and taken the opportunity to change out of her catsuit and into a pair of trousers and a figure-hugging long-sleeved shirt.

Gambit picked up the glass of Scotch he'd poured for himself in her absence and toasted her with a certain amount of cockiness, which could only mean that it had gone well. "I've talked to my cousin and she's says everything's in hand. That should keep both our names out of it, so you don't have to worry about any Ministry types beating down your door." He eyed her meaningfully. "Unless you were hoping to have some Ministry types beating down your door? Or one Ministry type, in particular?"

"Subtlety is wasted at this time of night," Emma said archly, pouring herself a measure of Scotch since Gambit had already brought out the bottle.

Gambit's eyes were still twinkling. "I didn't think I was being subtle."

"You weren't," Emma confirmed, sipping her drink and letting it linger on her tongue for a moment. Scotch wasn't her tipple, but it was still good. "But as we're talking about Steed—or not talking about him—have you given any thought to how you're going to explain where you've been? Steed is bound to hear about this extracurricular venture, and he might just put two and two together and work out that it's too much of a coincidence that you just so happened to take a day off when it happened."

"He might," Gambit acknowledged. "But he won't ask unless he's worried. Steed tends to let sleeping dogs lie unless he thinks there's a good reason to disturb them."

Emma arched an eyebrow. "So you think he will suspect, but he won't say anything unless it's important?"

"Sounds like Steed, doesn't it?" Gambit said with a wink.

"It does," Emma said wistfully, then a thought occurred to her. "Hey, that'll take care of Steed. What about Purdey?"

Gambit made a moue and suddenly took great interest in his glass of Scotch. "I don't think that Purdey's too concerned about what I get up to," he sighed. "Not enough to keep pushing once I give her a plausible explanation, anyway."

Emma cocked her head to one side. "Do you believe that?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes. No. I don't know," Gambit admitted, looking into his Scotch glass as though he might be able to divine some sort of mystical answers from the great beyond in its amber depths. "It's what I keep telling myself, in any case. That way I can keep myself from getting disappointed. Can't have your hopes dashed if you never got them up in the first place." He shot Emma a heartrendingly vulnerable smile.

"That's a sensible strategy, but not a realistic one," Emma said, not unkindly. "I know it's none of my business, but from the little you've told me, I think Purdey's shown signs that she cares about you more than you're letting on."

"Sometimes," Gambit said wistfully. "Sometimes it seems that way. But sometimes it doesn't. Don't get me wrong. She's a friend, a good friend. That's never really been in any doubt. But whether it goes beyond that—I just don't know." He shrugged and took a sip of Scotch. "And until and unless I do, I have to keep myself sane and believe that we're nothing more than…" He trailed off and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry we're getting sidetracked, aren't we? We should be celebrating your triumph."

"Our triumph," Emma corrected.

Gambit wagged a finger at her. "It was your hunch that got us here. I was just the help."

"You were _a_ help," Emma asserted, "and I'm extremely grateful for it. You're selling yourself short, Mike. On several fronts. And I won't stand for it. Not in my flat."

"Is this the circle of truth?" Gambit quipped. "Because whenever I bring up Steed—"

"We're not talking about Steed. We're talking about you."

"Appealing to my ego is clever but it'll only get you so far," Gambit teased, tongued-in-cheek.

"I know my subject well," Emma quipped back. "But really, you ought not to sell yourself short. You and Purdey are very close and work well together. That doesn't happen unless there's a deeper feeling that informs it. It doesn't have to mean something more, but it often does. And I'm willing to bet there's more to get your hopes up for than you're letting yourself recognise. And I think the same goes for Purdey."

Gambit laughed self-consciously. "I might take that bet."

"I don't think you could afford it," Emma said lightly. "But I will say that there is a tendency in this business for people to play their cards close to their chests, and they often reveal more by what they do than what they say. It'd be a great pity if you quit following the path before you saw where it led." Emma's eyes turned wistful, and Gambit knew she was no longer talking about Purdey. "I don't believe in regrets, but giving up on something before time can be a very difficult burden to live with."

"Yeah," Gambit agreed softly, unsure how to respond now that the waters had become infinitely deeper. "Well, I'm not planning on going anywhere. Not yet, anyway. I just wish I had something more solid to hang onto. Just to know where I stood."

"That's the trick," Emma agreed, sipping her drink ruefully. "And people can be very difficult to pin down."

"So how long do you wait?" Gambit wanted to know. "How long before you're just playing the fool, living in denial, and making it worse for both of you?"

Emma shook her head, long fingers caressing the curve of the glass absently. "Only you can answer that. It depends on how long your heart can live with the ambiguity." She levelled her gaze at Gambit, steady, suddenly defiant. "How long you can put your life on hold. Whether there are other offers worth pursuing."

Gambit swallowed hard, knowing they'd drifted well beyond the point of no return. "It's never easy, is it?"

"No," Emma agreed, "but that's what keeps life interesting." Her face cleared, and her smile was suddenly free and easy. "It would be very disappointing if everything was straightforward and uneventful, wouldn't it?"

Gambit grinned back, a genuine grin. "Yes. Yes it would."

Emma raised her glass. "To keeping things interesting."

Gambit leaned forward to clink his glass against hers. "Cheers."


	8. The Explanation

The Caper

Disclaimer: I don't own _The New Avengers,_ nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. I don't own _The Avengers_ , either, or any of its characters. They belong to Canal+ (Image) International. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.

Timeline: Takes place late in season one, in the autumn of 1976. This story fits into my Arc series of stories. For more information about the Arc, please see my profile.

* * *

It was close to four in the morning when Gambit got back to his flat. At Emma's, he'd felt wired. Now all he felt was exhaustion, the last dregs of adrenaline finally leaving his system. He staggered over to retract his bed from the couch and fumbled with getting his boots off as the mechanism whirred into action. Leaving his footwear scattered haphazardly on the floor, he shrugged out of his leather jacket, having already deposited the remains of his tuxedo costume on a nearby chair on the way in. He was dimly aware that he needed a shower, and probably a shave, after the night he'd had, but the mattress beckoned his weary bones like a siren luring a weary sailor onto the rocks. Without making a conscious decision, his body tipped forward of its own accord, and he flopped onto the mattress face first with little grace. He was asleep before he hit the sheets.

His buzzer screeched what seemed like mere seconds after he'd closed his eyes. It was followed soon after by what sounded like irate knocking, each pound on his door resulting in an equally forceful pounding in Gambit's own head. Whoever it was sounded determined, and not liable to give up if he didn't answer. Indeed, they sounded more likely to break the door down with their fists. Gambit groaned, muttered an oath, and then set about picking his exhausted frame up off the bed and shambling over to answer the door.

He pulled the door open so abruptly that his visitor's hand wound up swinging through thin air, nearly missing his jaw. "Purdey," Gambit identified, with little surprise. Who else would be quite so insistent—and persistent—as Purdey? "What are you doing here so early?"

"Early?" Purdey pulled a face and consulted her watch. "It may be early for you, Mike Gambit, but most people are at work by now."

Gambit squinted uncomprehendingly at her. "At four in the morning?"

"Four?" Purdey repeated, incredulous now. "In Canada, maybe. Here in London, it's half past eight."

"It is?" Gambit checked the watch face on the inside of his wrist, and found that Purdey was correct. He realised he must have fallen asleep instantly, and probably would have kept on sleeping if Purdey hadn't awoken him. "Oh," he said to Purdey's expectant expression. "Why are you here then?"

"Other than to serve as your alarm clock?" Purdey said acridly, shouldering past him into the flat. "I came to see if you were coming into work today."

Gambit frowned a little in confusion, tendrils of sleep still curled around his fatigued brain. "Why wouldn't I be?" he asked Purdey.

"Oh, I don't know," Purdey said snippily, but her arms were crossed in that self-protective way she adopted when she was worried. "You called in at the last minute yesterday and took the day off, without a word to anyone. I thought you might put in a repeat performance."

"What if I did?" Gambit pointed out. "A man's allowed some time off to catch up on things."

"That's what Steed told me you said," Purdey said brittlely.

Gambit raised an eyebrow, despite his half-somnolent state. "You don't sound like you believed him."

Purdey scowled. "That's because you weren't here at all yesterday, so I don't know how you could have caught up on much of anything." She swept her gaze over Gambit's dishevelled appearance, taking in the untidy hair, patches of dirt, and creased, slept-in clothes. "I'd say you were catching up with someone." She leaned in and took a sniff. "Possibly at an all night cookout. Where have you been? You smell like a bonfire."

Gambit shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. "What if I was? It's my business, not yours."

"It is as your partner," Purdey argued, crossed arms tightening with her anxiety. "It makes me wonder if something's wrong."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

Gambit regarded her with exasperated, fond wryness. "I'm not being got at, if that's what you're thinking."

"I'm not sure what to think." Purdey was stubbornly unyielding at the best of times, and Gambit knew the chances of him being able to get her to drop the line of questioning were slim to none. It was both inconvenient and rather flattering. "Why don't you tell me?"

"I am allowed a private life, you know," Gambit tried, a last ditch effort to throw her off the scent. He didn't really want to outright lie to Purdey if he could help it. But he'd promised Emma that he'd keep the whole thing quiet, and that included not telling Purdey exactly what had been going on. "You don't tell me what you get up to every minute."

He had her there. Purdey's mouth twitched slightly. "You do ask," she pointed out.

"Sometimes," Gambit acknowledged, feeling a small smile stretch his own lips. "But I know when to drop it."

Purdey hesitated as she tried to work out how to counter this new defence. "That's different," she defended.

"How?"

"Because I pencil my leave in weeks or months in advance," Purdey countered. "Whereas you hardly ever take time off. So when you do, and take it at the last minute with no explanation, and barely a word to anyone, then I think I'm justified in wondering what's going on."

Checkmate. In their line of work, it paid dividends to be on the alert for any odd behaviour. "Okay," Gambit sighed. "I'll tell you."

Purdey hadn't been expecting that, if the way she blinked and self-consciously put her hands on her hips was any indication. "You will?"

Gambit nodded. "I was catching up with someone."

Purdey took a step toward him, curiousity getting the better of her. "Who?"

Gambit took a deep breath. "An old mate of mine from my navy days. He works on a cruise liner now. His ship was in port nearby, and he rang me up yesterday morning and asked if I could meet up, catch up on old times. I knew we didn't have anything pressing on, so I said okay. That's why it was so sudden." The lies came easily to his lips, almost easier than he would have liked. But he'd concocted this story just in case he needed to justify his absence, and now he did. "They were having a party on his ship, so he invited me along. We knew we probably wouldn't stay the course, though, so I used my tux in a bag and saved myself having to change clothes." He nodded at the discarded remains of his party dress, in case Purdey had seen them on her way in and wanted answers. "Then we went from the party on a bit of a pub crawl. To all our old haunts. Turned into a late night and an early morning. I didn't get in until four or so."

Purdey's lips were pursed, as though she wasn't quite convinced. "It must have been quite the night. You have patches of dirt on your clothes."

Gambit checked his attire, and swatted at the patches of grime sheepishly, sending up a fine cloud of dust. "I, uh, got a bit carried away. Took a bit of a tumble."

Purdey's arms were crossed again, this time sceptically. "How did you get that bruise on your knuckles?"

Gambit looked down at his right hand, and the darkening purple patch from where he'd punched one of Klizan's security men back at the house. In the dark of the night, he hadn't noticed it, but it was too late to hide it now. "Banged it when I fell," he justified.

"And the red marks on your wrists?" He could hear the scepticism practically dripping from Purdey's voice now. Not to mention the incredulity.

"Er, yes." Gambit hoped Purdey would interpret his hesitation as embarrassment. "We had a stupid bet at the pub. I had my cuffs with me—force of habit—and my mate didn't believe that I could pick my way out of them. Bit hard to do after you've had a few, but I won a fiver."

Purdey's raised eyebrow was so high now it was threatening to leap off of her face. "And why do you smell as though you've been charbroiled?"

"Oh, yeah. We went around the old neighbourhood. Someone was having an early bonfire."

Purdey pointed her chin up at him almost accusingly. "You have an answer for everything, don't you Mike Gambit?"

"Not quite. I don't have the meaning of life cracked just yet."

"Really, Gambit." Purdey was giving him the eye, and he could tell she clearly didn't quite believe him. "That's all there was to it? You went out revelling with your old navy friend?"

"That's right."

"And where is your friend now?" Purdey wanted to know.

Gambit made a moue and put on a show of considering the question. "Probably sleeping it off in his bunk on his ship en route to France. If his superiors haven't woken him up and torn a strip off him already."

"How convenient." Purdey's voice was a monotone.

"Not for him it isn't." Gambit paused and cycled back through the past few minutes of their conversation. "Wait, how did you know I was out all day?"

It was Purdey's turn to look uncomfortable. "Well, I didn't know what sort of trouble you could have gotten yourself into," she defended.

"So you rang my flat all day?" There was a pause, as Purdey's discomfort because more apparent and more intense. Gambit felt a grin stretch his lips of its own accord. "You came here, didn't you?"

Purdey's arms were crossed defensively now. "Well, I didn't know what had happened, did I? If you were tied up and locked in the bathroom, I wasn't going to be able to work that out from a phone call."

Gambit's expression softened. "You really were worried about me, weren't you?" he murmured, touched by her concern. Purdey liked to keep her emotions close to her chest, and as he'd told Emma, he was still somewhat uncertain as to how much she really cared about him outside of professional interest. But this was a definite sign that she worried after him, at least a little.

"I'm your partner," Purdey defended, but her voice was rapidly losing its forcefulness. "In this line of work, it's my job to look out for situations where you might have been grabbed by the other side."

Gambit shook his head very, very slowly. "And that's all there was to it?"

Purdey looked ready to say something cutting, but her heart wasn't in it. She hunched her shoulders, as though trying to protect herself from whatever her words might bring. "I was worried that, wherever you were, you might not come back," she confessed, voice small.

"Purdey…" Gambit's voice was gentle as he stepped in close to her. "I'm touched. But there's one thing you should know."

Purdey looked up from under her blonde fringe, blue eyes wary now that she'd made herself vulnerable. "What's that?"

Gambit smiled down at her. "Whatever's happened, I'll always come back for you." He rested his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead through her hair, felt a deep, shaky, relieved breath rattle through her body.

"So everything's okay?" she said when Gambit pulled away. "You're okay?"

"Yeah," Gambit assured, brushing a bit of her hair out of her eyes. "I'm fine."

"Okay." She nodded a little, and he could feel some of the tension leave her shoulders. "In that case, you'd better start getting ready. We have an early briefing, and you need a shower. I'm not going to sit beside you if you're reeking of bonfire."

Gambit grinned. Purdey was back on form. She'd accepted his story, regardless if she believed him or not. "I'll get going," he promised.

"Honestly, Mike Gambit," Purdey went on, moving to make some coffee without needing to be asked. "If I wasn't here to keep an eye on you, where would you be?"

"I don't want to think about it," Gambit said truthfully. "Thanks, Purdey-girl."

"You can thank me by moving a little faster. Your hangovers are your own problem." She was eyeing him sharply, but she'd already bared her soul. She cared. She'd revealed her hand. He'd been doubting her feelings, but if he'd taken on the caper to help Emma, he'd gotten something for himself out of it as well: hope. Despite his exhaustion and aches and pains, he left for the bathroom whistling, feeling better than he had in some time.

vvv

Unbeknownst to Purdey, Steed had also not gone straight home after work. Or at least, not straight back to the home he usually frequented. Most people at the Ministry knew that Steed still owned the flat at 3 Stable Mews, which he'd resided at for several years until the death of his Auntie Penelope, who had bequeathed him the property that he'd transformed into the stud farm. A long-held ambition to live out in the country and keep horses was fulfilled, and Steed had found the transition surprisingly easy. He hadn't missed living in the city and the accompanying nightlife as much as he'd believed he would. Even on very late nights spent at the Ministry, when the drive back to the country would be too daunting for most, Steed found himself drawn back to the farm, its peace and quiet and the comforting sounds of his horses beckoning him like warm waters after a long day.

But that night was different. And despite the inexorable draw of the country, Steed had opted to return to Stable Mews, where he drew back the dropcloth on the couch and settled in, drink in hand, while he waited for the linens to finish drying in anticipation of making the bed. Because regardless of what he'd told Purdey, he, too, harboured suspicions about Gambit's impromptu day off, and he wanted to be close at hand should anything worrisome come down the pipeline. Not that she was going to tell Purdey that. She was already worried enough, and Steed didn't want to worry her more, lest his fears prove unfounded, or worse, lest they be founded, but only to the extent that they jeopardised other secrets that Steed would have preferred remained secret. Even from Purdey.

So Steed slept at Stable Mews for the first night in a long time, and left instructions with the Ministry that he should be contacted there if need be, and for the latest dispatches to be delivered to his door come morning, rather than simply left for pick-up in his office mailbox. The request was complied with, if met with puzzlement, and Steed went to sleep safe in the knowledge that he was ready for action, and that there was nothing more to be done.

The next morning, Steed found the dispatches on his mat, pushed under the door in their anonymous manila envelope. Steed pointedly elected not to open them right away, taking time to brew coffee and put on his dressing gown before sitting down, with coffee cup and the "Times" close at hand, and the envelope in front of him. It was not the first time he was glad of his habit of not eating breakfast. The suspense would have been intolerable otherwise.

He slit the envelope open with a letter opener, and pulled the thin sheaf of pages out with a certain amount of trepidation. The dispatches outlined everything of note that had occurred overnight regarding the intelligence services, both domestic and foreign, in order to keep agents up to date on both the state of the world, and any potential connections to apparently disparate events. Steed knew that if Gambit was directly connected to anything, he would have been informed. It was the indirect connection he was looking for.

It had been a relatively quiet night, which meant what had happened stood out all the more vividly. Steed's eyes drifted over two or three reports without interest, before alighting on one particular account. Something from MI6, reported in by one Sara Lynley, a name Steed recognised as having a close connection to a certain individual in his own team. A number of dead bodies in a house blown up in the middle of nowhere. A connection to Klizan Aerotech. A large operation to undermine the British defences. And some decidedly hazy explanations as to where, exactly, the information that had cracked the case had come from… But no reports of any casualties on the intelligence side.

Steed leaned back in his chair, smiled, and took a sip of coffee. Satisfied all was right with the world, he turned to his copy of the "Times".

End


End file.
